Organizing Your Schedule

Everyone has a different method of being able to organize what is going on in their lives. It has taken me many years to come up with my own system that works for me. If you’re just starting to dive into organization, here are some ways that I keep my life organized and on track. What works for me may not work for you, but hopefully might give you some inspiration. I promise that once you get into a routine, it is so much easier!

Meal Organization

MAKING A MEAL LIST AS A SHARED NOTE
Every Sunday we put together a meal list. My husband I start the list and fills it out according to what is on our schedule for the week. So, for example if our girls have sports Tuesday and Wednesday, maybe they are easier quicker meals to make. I am not a fan of making dinner on the weekends after a long work week so my husband will pick meals or I will put down an easy crockpot meal. This is a shared note on our iphones that we write the list, and check off next to the meal once those items have been added to the shopping list.

MEAL LIST WHITEBOARD
Once we have our meal list put together, the last step is to write that list on a whiteboard that has the days of the week on it similar to this one on Amazon. This allows our kids to easily see the meals for the week, and makes it easy for us parents (the meal makers) to know what we are making for dinner each night.

Daily/Weekly Schedule

SHARED NOTE
Each week brings with it a new list of “to-do’s” from food shopping to soccer games to events. To keep each other on the same page, my husband and I have a shared weekly note. It looks similar to this:

Week of November 4th
Sunday Nov 3
11am Church
4pm Football

Monday Nov 4
Food Shopping
8am Phone call
9am Sams Club delivery

(and so on….)

Once there are a few days left from the previous week, I grab our “Weekly Starting Sheet” which is a note that keeps all of our routine events in one place so that I don’t need to start completely from scratch. For example, if the girls have soccer Mon, Tues, Thurs from 2-4pm, that’s already on that weekly starting list so it cuts down on time. Once that is copied over, I update the dates for the upcoming week, and add anything from my large wall calendar that needs to be added. I add anything from events to food shopping to reminders to purchase items. As those items are completed they get removed from the list, and if a task does not get done, it moves to another day.

Monthly Schedule

DESK CALENDAR
For work items, I have a desk calendar that I plan out upcoming projects so that I can visually see them at a glance. This allows me to block out adequate time for each project. In addition to keeping a running daily project list, a monthly desk calendar allows me to take that list and assign projects to certain days so I can visually see how many tasks I have assigned to a day.

SEASONAL WALL CALENDAR
I made another post about the seasonal wall calendar that I use, I don’t like to call it a wall calendar since I hang it on a door and not the wall, but this is really the hub of all information. It is where I write down up to a year in advance our appointments like dentist appointments and eye doctor appointments. Things I don’t want to forget like what days certain kids have lunches at school, or when their sports games are, pretty much everything gets written down on this (just not small daily tasks, see the daily/weekly schedule above).

GOOGLE CALENDAR
In the same way that I would not be able to organize my appointments without my seasonal wall calendar, my husband uses his Google Calendar the same way. When I make an appointment I will email him, and he adds it to his calendar. When he makes an appointment he tells, texts, or emails me and then I add it to the wall calendar. This allows us to prevent making overlapping appointments. If I know I’ll need to make an appointment when I’m out (like my next haircut), then I’ll take a picture of my wall calendar and also look at Google Calendar. This is a pretty surefire way to not have appointments that conflict with each other.

This might sound like a lot to do, but with how busy our lives are, it really helps to keep our family all on the same page and on track.