I hate back to school season. There, I said it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that the Geekling is heading back into a normal routine, but sad that my carefree summer attitude of “let’s skip that, it’s nice out” has to make way for my more realistic lifestyle of “Crap! We were supposed to be at JiuJitsu 10 minutes ago!”
Considering I thought I was fairly type 'a' about being organized, the older my son gets, the more I struggle to keep our family where we’re supposed to be when we’re supposed to be there. I’ve tried managing our personal lives using a mix of Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and our BlackBerries, but it just hasn’t worked for us until now.
Enter the Cozi Family Organizer.
Cozi is an app, webpage and sanity saver that a Mom friend of mine told me about. It does what I couldn’t easily do with my husband: share an online calendar, do my grocery planning and share my hubby’s to-do list easily.
With the app, the Geekdad and I can both easily access our family calendar via our iPhone, Android or BlackBerry devices, making it easy for us to stay up to date. There is even an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that syncs the calendar to my office MS Outlook (which syncs again to my BlackBerry calendar).
I spent a good few hours inputting our entire life into our shared calendar. I set up the usual medical appointments, car service appointments, sports etc. but also a few reminders to re-order our contact lenses, refill prescriptions etc. The calendars are colour coded, and sorted by family member, which makes it super simple for me to tell at a glance who is supposed to be where. To be sure I really don’t forget anything, I have Cozi set up to email a weekly summary of all of our appointments to my office email that I print and post next to my phone. Now THAT’s type 'a'.
Cozi also has a feature that lets you add meals to your calendar to simplify your meal planning. I’ve used it successfully for the last couple of weeks, so now my husband can look at the calendar and know that next Tuesday is a great night for him to go out with the guys, because we’re having fish and salad for supper.
The grocery and to-do list features allow me to easily update and mark things as complete. Now when I stop on the way home for ketchup chips, I also see that we’re out of something that somebody else needs as well. If we’re both at the store at the same time, the list is updated as soon as someone checks off an item, so we’re not heading home with extras.
I love how this app has made me feel like I'm in control of our schedule again. If you’re looking to get your family organized this back-to-school season, give Cozi a try!
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