Calendars and Planners for Busy Work-At-Home-Moms: Inexpensive Ways to Stay on Top of Family Activities

A new school year is almost upon us, and with it comes the barrage of back-to-school activities, projects and assignments for busy parents to manage. To help you start off the school year on the right foot, today let’s talk about calendars and planners for busy families.

If you’ve been in an office supply store lately, you’ve seen the latest gadgets and gizmos to help you stay on top of your business whether in an office or at home. Keeping ahead of the rush doesn’t have to involve spending lot of money for electronic gadgets that will only confuse you more until you get used to how to use them. Sometimes, the tried and true methods still work the best.

As a work-at-home mom (WAHM), you are saving money on childcare but also building a business that you can be proud of. To that end, you need certain equipment to make it happen. For the sake of scheduling, a PDA or Smartphone are great technologies, but there are still many folks who could not function without their paper calendar/planner. These families are visual and still need to see the week or month spread out in front of them instead of looking on a small hand-held phone screen. That’s fine and there are still many functional calendars/planners from which to choose.

Have you seen the new calendars for 2011? They aren’t just the pocket variety your mom carries around or the one that comes in the mail from the insurance company (not that there’s anything wrong with those). Calendars for busy families have taken on a functionality that is quite exciting.

Speaking of calendars, two that I’ve found that work great for busy families are BusyBodyBook and Mom’s Family Calendar by Sandra Boynton. These calendars are fun to look at and come with stickers and pens to record everyone’s schedule. The BusyBodyBook provides a space to write in every family member’s name and their activities each month. You can also use this grid-style calendar for meal planning.

Family calendars help you mesh family life and business commitments. Since the kitchen is the central meeting place for a family, the calendar can hang there for everyone to record what they are doing. Or, they can give all their information to you and you can do it. Mom, you can even list your work hours each day on the family calendar so your beloved husband and kids know when you are not to be disturbed.

Now, let’s talk about planners. A planner works best when used in conjunction with a desk calendar. In your planner, each day is broken down by hours. The time slots that you listed on the family calendar can be broken down into specific project commitments in your planner. A planner can go everywhere with you so you are never without your schedule.

Choose a planner carefully. There are many on the market and some have features you don’t need. Franklin Covey offers a line of planners for all sorts of needs. Look for:

• Removable pages
• Section for notes or notepad
• Address book
• Place for business cards
• Tabs for easy look-up
• Vinyl pouch for bills, messages, etc.

Keeping your business schedule straight is not an easy task, but that doesn’t mean it has to be an expensive one. You can still stay on top of your daily work with the ever handy, even if they are considered “old fashioned” by your kids, calendars and planners made for the job.

A word of warning from a Professional Organizer … learn to use your calendar/planner religiously! Never be tempted to jot something down on a piece of paper or sticky note. Train yourself to grab your planner/calendar no matter what, even if it is in another part of the house – stop for a moment, go get your planner and record the event. You will save yourself so much headache later on when that slip of paper gets  misplaced before getting recorded in your calendar. Trust me … I see it happen every day with my clients.

Learn more about the organizational tools and planners we carry at The Simplified Home.

Originally posted 2010-08-02 15:42:23. Republished by Blog Post Promoter