Modern Day Calendar

How do I keep track of when to flip my mattress? Or dentist appointments for 8 people? Or what to make for lunch on Thursday? With a color coded calendar, of course! It is a lot easier than you think thanks to the iCal program that came on our Mac. If you don't have this program you can use one of several similar, FREE online calendars like those offered by Yahoo or my favorite Google (through a gmail account).

I put everything on this calendar. The menus including rotating breakfast and lunches. Each person has their own color (well...not exactly...the twins still share since they don't have many activities just yet and all their appointments are usually the same time). There is also a color for "family" (in case we ALL have to go) and I added holidays including days to put out the flag.

I like that you can set events to repeat. So once I put in someone's birthday I don't have to keep putting that info in again each year. I also have a cleaning schedule. I don't clean the house all in one day anymore. Now I just do a room or a bit each day. I think the house stays cleaner this way. I don't have a block of 3 or 4 hours to just clean any more anyway! Laundry isn't on there though... that is a near daily chore. This is a great system for seasonal chores (like changing the battery in the smoke detectors) that I tend to forget.

I do put school stuff on the calendar as well but I "turned off" that part of the calendar when I took the screen shot above because it really fills it up!

I can view the calendar to monthly, weekly, or daily. Just like a fancy planner only I don't have to re-write the information on several pages.

I can set any "event" to remind me ahead of time. When I remember, I put when my library books are due and set an email reminder for the day or two before. It works great...when I remember to put the due date in. I do have it set to remind me a week ahead of time for out of state birthdays...so I remember to get cards! Now if I could just remember to mail them on time!!

Off on the side is a "to do" list...things that don't really have a date but I want to get done.

Some days I don't even have to open the calendar program since I have a calendar "widget" on my desktop. I can see what I have on the calendar for today and coming up. This is what that looks like:
Now since I live in the real world I don't always get these things done but it is nice to have a plan. If I skip something...it will come around again eventually! Or I just have a day where I play catch up and get more done. I try and keep it simple and if it doesn't work I change it!