One of the biggest challenges we moms have is keeping everyone in our families organized, on track, and on time. If you’re like me, you’ve got a wall calendar or refrigerator calendar that’s packed with events, appointments, and scribbled notes.
Time management is an important component of going frugal because your time is more valuable than your money; once spent, it’s gone for good. You can’t “make” more time.
But you can organize and manage your time and your family’s time more efficiently, especially with the use of free online family planners. These tools are far more than just a simple calendar; they offer tools to help organize all facets of your household management.
Let’s take a look at three online family planners.
Famundo is a free and comprehensive family planner that offers not just a calendar, but also the ability to import your child’s school calendar. You can invite family and friends to share and contribute to your calendar as well as send messages within Famundo to other members. Love lists? Create to-do lists for yourself and family members as well as a grocery list. And you can take it to a more personal level by creating a family blog as well.
Mediabee bills itself to be, “…as easy to use as a wall planner.” Like Famundo, you can create to-do lists for your family and offer feedback when the jobs are done. Share some love and kindness with a quick note during the day from your cell phone. Save all those original works of art from your kiddos and create a Web Player digital gallery of their creations. Mediabee is still growing and adding new functions so you should expect updates and changes if you opt for this online planner.
Google Calendar is a natural choice if you’re already heavily involved in Google Apps (like most of us on Blogger). View your calendar by month, week, or day and highlight those days that are critical to remember. You can also integrate your @gmail.com account into your calendar as well as easily import calendars from other apps like MS Outlook. Google Calendar also has a feature similar to Evite.com where you can not only plan events, but send invitations to guests as well as see their RSVPs and comments. You can also create multiple calendars for different facets of your life (home, work, sports, school) as well as subscribe to other user’s published calendars.
I’m hoping that using one of these online organizers will make planning and organizing my family’s life and my own workload as a blogger more streamlined and more realistic. It’s awfully easy to get overwhelmed when you keep piling on the tasks and jotting to-do lists on scraps of paper; using an all-in-one online planner may help you (and me!) see the bigger picture and schedule your days to be more aligned with your true priorities .
Do you have an online planner that you use and would recommend? Please share so everyone can check it out!
Catch up with Marianne online at her frugal living blog, The New Frugal Mom or her personal blog, Writer-Mommy.
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I have been using Cozi, you can even get coupons straight from the home page! From their site
“Cozi is a free web service that helps families manage crazy schedules, track shopping and to do lists, organize household chores, stay in communication and share memories—all in one place.”
springpad is a great way to organize all of the things going on in your life – from the weekly meal planner and favorite recipes springpad to the date planner and receipt manager and more. check it out, I think you’d really like it!