Time to get organised #review

Sep 8, 2011

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I’ve got some supplies.

That’s a personalised family activity planner from Stuck on You Biz (look under gift ideas). Each family member has their own personalised column, and there’s stickers for months so you can start it whenever suits. There’s a whole bunch of stickers too, ranging from doctors to birthdays to save scribbling in columns. The Things to Blog book was from them at Cybermummy too, came in a neat little bag that Smallest ran off with.

The Lord Dodo Wall planner was from Cybermummy too. I’m going to use that one to expand on the things I’ve got planned, and the family activity planner to coordinate where we all need to be. I should note you can only fit 5 family members on to the activity planner, so next year I’ll have to draw on an extra column…

The book, How to Do Everything and be Happy: Your Easy-peasy Guide to Creating Happiness is interesting. It’s a self help book, but isn’t at all touchy feely, it’s refreshingly blunt and down to earth. Doesn’t have a lot of time for feeling sorry for yourself – it’s not about analysing how you got into a state of unhappiness, which, let’s face it, does describe many of us. Instead of pondering imponderables, it just offers a set of tools/rules for how to work your way out of it. And some of it will be work. And it does require organisation – the other tool I’ll be making extensive use of is the google calender app on my phone. Although I do need to work out how to make it display dp’s appointments as well – it does online, I’ve merged his calendar with mine. Doesn’t seem to work the same on the phone though.

So there you go. (Yet another) fresh start time. But this time, I’ve got equipment. And a plan. (More to come on that.)

*Disclosure. The products in this post were mainly supplied for review, or given to me in the goody bags at Cybermummy. The opinions are, as ever, my own.

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Comments

10 responses to “Time to get organised #review”

Melaina25
9 September 2011
I’ve started using Google calendars and I have a planner and a wall calendar with column and I bought a Dry Erase board.
I still think I won’t be organized 🙂
Reply
1. Jax
  9 September 2011
  I have a wall planner we bought last year which spent the year behind the map of the world on the floor in the hall :/ I’m doing better now that I can enter appts at the time I’m given them into the smartphone.
  Reply
Ruth J
9 September 2011
Be very careful – in my experience, more calendars tends to make things worse, not better. Which one will be your authoritative source? And how do you plan to make sure the others are kept up to date?
If I were you, I would EITHER treat the family planner as the main calendar, and only use your phone to make notes in while you’re out, to write on it when you get back, OR I would go headlong into Google Calendars for everyone, and scrap the paper version. Multiple calendars makes me very afraid…
Reply
1. Jax
  9 September 2011
  The google calendar is the definitive resource, the family planner is so that the children can see structure to their week and what is coming up. You’re right though, there is a danger in too many places to write things down.
  Reply
  1. Alison
    10 September 2011
    We have various Google calendars that are shared between us all (and mostly with my mum too, because she likes to know what we’re doing now she’s far away!), and then it all gets transferred monthly onto my big month planner. During the month new things for that month get added to the wall planner, and I don’t worry so much about making sure everything is synched over to gcal (although they mostly do get copied eventually), because the wall planner is the big obvious one that everyone looks at. New things for the future get added to Google calendars, and notes for the next month get written at the bottom of the big planner. It seems to work 🙂
    Reply
Midlife Singlemum
9 September 2011
I’m a great organiser. What I want to know is, how do you make yoursself actually do the stuff you’ve scheduled for yourself rather than flopping down on the sofa with a cuppa and a slice of cake?
Reply
1. Jax
  9 September 2011
  Generally speaking, I don’t. Which is the next stage of the re organisation.
  Reply
Tbird Anni
9 September 2011
good luck with the organising! I love the idea of a personalised organisers, we have a “his hers and the kids” type one in the kitchen but for some reason one of the columns never gets filled in and I still don’t know where he is half the time! I’m not sure having it personalised would help, but it would look lovely on my wall!
Reply
1. Jax
  9 September 2011
  It does look particularly lovely – there’s a range of designs as well.
  Reply
Elizabeth
10 September 2011
I’ve always had a basic monthly calender on the fridge as Hazel needs to be aware of what events are happening–when they were little it was colour coded so they could follow–a habit I haven’t stopped! I think it looks nicer! 🙂 But we have moved to Google-like Alison, as we have so much more happening, and this way M gets reminders at work so he knows when to be home for events, classes (his & the kids) and we always have dinner together. Sad part is I’m thinking of actually scheduling work/craft time for the kids–but that might be going a step too far, even for me! I do keep an organizer with me at all times-so I can arrange appointments when out and about, but rarely put my mobile on so can’t be bothered using that option.
Reply