The Years are Short, but the Days are Busy

I’m back, after a crazy busy week working our elementary school book fair, balancing the kids’ activities and my own schedule, and trying to stay sane through it all. Don’t get me wrong. I’m incredibly blessed to have these four children, and for them to be so involved in great activities. Jacob is part of a smaller, but award-winning marching band, and Emily is in one of the country’s top-ranked high school Speech and Debate teams. Those activities and their practice schedules are enough to drive one bonkers. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So I keep not one, but two calendars. I, like many these days, rely in part on my mobile device to keep my schedule. We have a family iCalendar which I update so that the husband and I have things synced. I learned that this does not take the place of actually communicating the schedule with him once a week, but that’s a work in progress.

I suppose I’m ‘old school’ in that I also depend on my paper planner book. I guess I’m more visual than I thought because seeing the color-coded blocks in the family schedule really helps me to remember who needs to be where when. I use a weekly planner small enough to throw in my purse and carry around, but large enough to write significant details. I like that there are two sections for each day of the workweek: one for calendaring and one for to-dos. The to-do section is where I keep track of what I need to accomplish for the day, along with significant completed tasks or events I want to remember, and my daily spending. I have not gotten into the bullet journaling trend. I like my calendar separate from my actual journal, but functionally my planner is probably a sort of hybrid of ‘traditional’ calendaring and bullet journaling. Whatever my color-coded method can be called, it works for me, and that’s what’s most important. In this shared adventure, it can get a bit hectic, but it is beautiful nonetheless.

What are your tips for keeping your day organized?