Reasons to Start Using a Family Calendar if You Haven’t Already
August is suddenly here! And with the last month of summer comes the somewhat painful experience of getting the whole family back to a regular schedule — back to making school and work the priority once again. You can make this whole process go smoothly with good time management. Most of us already use calendars, in one form or another. But, have you started using one master calendar for your entire family? If so, good for you! You are already on the right track with a tool that everyone can use to communicate demands on time, and to see those overlaps of “free time” to dedicate to family activities.
Whether you use built-in e-calendars (iCal or Google Calendar) or some form of a physical calendar, if you start consolidating all family members’ events in one place it will make management of the whole family’s time SO much easier. Here are the reasons why:
- You can more easily keep track of everyone’s appointments and events, and you won’t accidentally overlap them, or even worse… miss them! Assign each member his/her own color to make it easy to distinguish each member’s event from another.
- You can ensure there is time when nothing is scheduled and use it to either tackle a project together or just have “family down time”.
- It’s easier to keep up with repeated things like family chores. (Rather than having a separate “chore chart”, why not just keep track of “chore time” on your family’s master calendar).
- As your kids get older, they can help maintain the master calendar. Without even realizing it, they will be learning valuable time management skills that they will take with them into adulthood.
- It’s easier to see the ways of “maximizing” your time such as scheduling regular doctor’s appointments together.
We’ve made a good case for using a family calendar…and we hope you are motivated to give it a try. If you need help setting up a time management system for your family, please reach out to us here at Styled & Organized!
