I wanted to say first of all, thank you for the kind words on Friday’s post. I went back and read your comments, and gosh. You guys. They really lifted my spirits, and just meant so much to me.

I do my best to post my authentic self here, good and bad. But how raw and scary these last few weeks have been for me, I considered keeping those words in Friday’s post to myself. I’m mentally in a much better place than when I wrote those words. Writing, prayer, and working through a plan are the ways I work through things, and I feel at least at peace with where we are right now. As Nathan reminds me often, we will get through it. Whatever it ends up being, we will figure it out. What’s that saying about how your batting average of getting through hard things so far is 100%?

Now, onto the lighter side of life. I missed Let’s Look last week for Shay and Erika’s monthly link-up! They looked at scheduling and organizing the family, which is truly something I kind of enjoy. I love figuring out the pieces of how to make things work. (I may regret saying that when the kids are older and have many activities, school events, etc.!). Right now, it’s truthfully pretty simple for us. But I love a schedule and order to things.

Harrison is involved in at most two activities in a season, and Jonathan will likely start a couple of activities in the spring. But in the scheme of juggling schedules and organizing families, we’re still in the minor leagues. :). But I’m going to share what works for me to try to organize our family.

I Live by my Calendar. If it’s not on my calendar, I will not remember it. It does not exist. And you do not have priority for doing that activity or event. It rules everything. I went on a journey loooong ago attempting to find the perfect family calendar. I’ve asked so many friends what they do for their “shared” calendar, and I usually get one of two options and I don’t like either. They use the Cozi app family calendar. Or they have a shared Apple calendar on their iPhones/iPads that they add all family events to.

You guys, I didn’t like either. I wanted one master calendar of ALL MY THINGS, including work. My job uses Microsoft Outlook for their calendar, and Microsoft Outlook does not sync with any of those options, so you’re left with adding things multiple times to calendars – once to your Outlook calendar and once to your family calendar, if you want a whole picture of your day/week/month. Or flipping between two calendars to determine what’s going on in your life.

I would love for someone to make a feature that would allow me to select in Outlook if an event should be transferred to a family calendar, and then it would magically show up on a joint calendar, but I could still have everything on my one personal calendar. PLEASE SOMEONE MAKE THIS or tell me it if already exists!

What worked for us, since both my work and Nathan’s work uses Outlook is that we send each other event invites from our work calendars for any family events, date nights, or even personal social events that we have that the other will have to cover on little boy duty. That way we each have our own calendars with everything on it for our day.

Is mine color coded by family member for each person’s event? Yes. Of course. What kind of Type A organizer do you think I am? 🙂

I use Apple Reminders a lot on my phone. I set reminders on my phone to help make sure I have all the boxes checked for myself and the kids. I set recurring weekly reminders to wash the kids’ waterbottles from school and switch our their lovies to clean ones. I set reminders for myself if there are appointments I need to schedule, or check in on a friend that has a big doctor appointment or event coming up.

I set YEARLY reminders to check my smoke detector batteries, schedule the dog’s annual well visit. I even have reminders set for things like dealing with a particular garden pest that comes out at certain of year, so I know when to start looking for the bug and dealing with it.

I Meal Plan + Grocery Shop once a week. I know so many of you meal plan. I put on my calendar every single week thirty minutes every Thursday to sit down and meal plan for the next week. I look at our upcoming week’s calendar, nights that we have events, and then I plan accordingly. A super busy week at work for me looks like leaning more heavily on easy meals. Pulling meals I’ve stored in the freezer. Opting for pasta and meat sauce from a can. Crockpot meals, etc.

I Purge Things Often. I am constantly editing our house. By that, I mean, I often times open a drawer and get rid of all of the things that we don’t use anymore. I hold on to very little that I don’t use. I go through the boys’ backpacks weekly and pitch most of the things that come home. And the playroom in particular is edited often. Mostly to rid it of what seems to be a never-ending pit of broken toys.

Those are the things that come to mind when I think about organizing our family!