Organizing the Calendar

 

            If you’ve been here long, you know I’m a paper planner girl through and through. I love paper planners just like I love paper books. I have (and use) an electronic calendar for work, and I can love that one too, but for our everyday life at home, it’s paper all the way.

            The other day, a friend of mine (and mom of three) asked on Facebook how people organized their family calendars, because she was struggling to find the right method for her own family. I didn’t feel qualified to answer her since I have zero children, but it made me think that perhaps one or two of you could use calendar organizing tips – whether your calendar is paper or electronic.

            I found the planner that works best for me (in this season of life anyway) last summer. It’s called The Prayerful Planner, and I use the undated version, because I started my planner journey in June, and they don’t make a mid-year pre-dated version. I actually just ordered my next planner yesterday, because I need to start filling it in! The beauty of ordering mid-year from this company is getting to order clearance planners before new patterns release. If you’re ordering an undated planner, clearance is life. You can still use the whole thing and pay less for it! WIN!!!

            This planner has a number of features beyond a calendar, and I won’t dive into those today, but they exist! (I can talk about them in a later post if any of you want to hear more.)

            One thing the planner offers that I must have in any planner is a month-at-a-glance page. Here are the things I list on that 2-page spread.

·       *    I write in birthdays and anniversaries in dark green ink at the bottom of the squares. Ideally this helps me not miss any greetings, but it still happens.

·      *     I write in holidays (major ones) in dark blue ink at the bottom of the squares. This helps me know how to plan around those days. (For example, I know not to over-fill Easter weekend, because we’ll have a Good Friday service to attend and I’ll need to spend some time baking for Sunday.)

·       *    I put a little pink heart and the number of our monthiversary on the top of the 2^nd day of each month. I never forget the day, but now that we’re in triple digits, this helps me remember what month we’re celebrating. If you’re not a monthiversary person, you could do something similar to keep track of baby month birthdays or any other such milestone.

·     *      Anything that involves the two of us and regular life gets written in hot pink pen. I go ahead and pre-fill things that happen on the regular, like our commitment to volunteer at church, small group gatherings, Lexi’s grooming and monthly medications, etc. That way I don’t forget the big, regular stuff. I add in other commitments as they pop up: meetings, appointments, dates, etc.

·      *    My speaking engagements are added in light green.

·      *     Ryan’s work-related events are in orange and mine are in purple. I don’t write in every appointment we have on every single day, but if we have something unusual, I put it in our planner.

Using different colors helps me quickly see how busy we both are, or if most things fall only to one of us in any given month. If I start to see too much color (of any kind) spilling over, I know it’s time to pull back on adding in extra things. If the pages seem pretty blank, I know it’s a good time to consider hosting company or going on an out-of-town adventure.

We also have a chalkboard calendar that hangs in our home – in our command center. I found it at a garage sale a couple of years ago, and it serves as our family calendar. I put the schedule basics on it (no birthdays or anything like that) so Ryan can also see what’s coming up. On this calendar, I also write in our trash days, so we don’t forget to put that out for pickup. While he has full access to my planner at any time, he typically doesn’t dig through it, so he really likes having the chalkboard calendar visible and updated for his own information. At the end of every month, I just wipe it off and refill it with the next month’s information.

This method works for our little family. Maybe you need something different if you’re managing more schedules, but this is our organization method. We aren’t perfect and still sometimes overbook or miss something if I fail to get it on the calendar, but for the most part, this keeps us right in line!