Day 24: Organize your family calendar

How to Organize your family calendar
I look at our family calendar at least six times a day. I do this because I have missed many things when I wasn’t remembering to check it. I now have a LARGE calendar in our command center and everyone’s information goes on that one calendar. I do not have one calendar for each person because I like it to all be in one place- I like things simple & organized.

Step 1: Put everything on one calendar.
When I am out, I add things to my phone calendar and as soon as I get home, it gets transferred to my command center calendar. I can’t have it in different places. If I get home and I find that I already have something in that spot, I just call & move my new appt.

Step 2: Color Coded Entries (to do or not to do)
It is easiest to color-code your calendar based on the person, but you could do this any way that works for you (example: by the time of day: morning appts- blue, afternoon- yellow, evening- red). I personally don’t do this. I tried, but I needed six colors for our family and it was just too much. To me, it doesn’t matter who needs something, if it is important, it is on there and I need to read it. When our kids are older and can handle their own appointments and schedules, I will probably go back to color-coding.

Step 3: Add things as they happen
Make sure that as soon as you get that school calendar or sports schedule, you walk right over & add the dates to your calendar. I also keep the hard copy of it right next to my big calendar (taped onto the bottom of my calendar) because I like to double check things, but I make sure that I write it on there RIGHT AWAY! I don’t want to forget anything or miss anything.

Step 4: Add b-days & reminders:
Not only do I add our family and friend’s birthdays, but I actually write on my calendar when I need to send a card.
So- if my Aunt’s birthday is on December 29th, I know that I need to mail the card by the 23rd (because of holidays), so I will write “Mail E’s Card” on the 23rd. (Now getting to the store to get the card & remembering to buy more stamps is another story, but at least I know when it should go out!)

Step 5: Highlight very important things
Sometimes you will have something that is very important (vacation flight or office meeting).  These things can not be missed, so I will highlight them on our calendar. I will also write a reminder the week before hand: example: Start packing for vacation!

Make your calendar easy for you to organize.  What ever works for you and is EASY for you to keep up with will help you to be more organized.  If you put a system in place that is too much work or requires too much time, you will not stick with it.  Make an easy plan and run with it!

If you missed any days, you can start at the beginning! Click here for our 40 days of organization.

Make sure that you check out the link on organizing your command center, too!  Click on the picture to see how you can make your command center!

Good luck!

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Are you ready for DAY 25?

ps- if you need even more great advice, Check out my decluttering series