What am I Doing Today?

One of the hardest things for me as a busy mom who is going to college to get my next degree is to keep myself organized. After all, I'm trying to keep track of my work events and deadlines, family plans and bills, and then school assignments and deadlines as well. Then factor in my side graphic design business and blogging and you have a mess. So how in the world do I manage all of those things?

There is not a single tool for this task, but rather several that I use together. The first of these is Google Calendar. The benefit of this is that it allows me to enter all of my events from various calendars into one place that tracks it all. Plus, I can share this calendar with my husband so he always knows what's coming up.

Next, I have a whiteboard calendar that I built in my office to keep me on track with all my appointments for the month. This board is directly in front of my desk, so all I have to do is look up to see what I have coming up or need to be working on. The great things about this calendar board are that it was cheap to buy the supplies and build, can be customized any way you want, and best of all, everything erases! Let's start with the important part. How did I build it?

My husband helped me with this project. We started with this 4ft x 8ft white board wall panel from Lowe's. This whole panel only costs less than $15 and can be cut into several pieces to create multiple boards. From there, we bought some screws and washers and attached it to the wall. Next comes building the calendar. For that, I purchased some washi tape that I liked the pattern on to make the calendar lines. Each box on the calendar is about a 4" square. We left space at the top to put the days of the week. Under the calendar, we put three columns that I can use to enter information into. I labeled these columns Upcoming (for events I need to be aware of), Goals (what I want to accomplish this month), and the third one can be anything, but I use it for any notes I need to jot down.

I have only had this calendar for about two weeks, and already it is indispensable. For a $20 project, it is well worth the time to help with organization.

The last tool I have recently started utilizing to help me stay organized is all about dinner time. I have a bad habit of buying groceries each week with a menu in mind, but during the week I don't stick to it. To prevent that from happening, I have two dry erase boards in my kitchen that I have started utilizing for the weekly menu. The top board contains the menu for the week, and the bottom board has space for my family to put their requests for next week. The thing I love about this is that my husband can just jot down what he wants for dinner whenever it comes to mind, instead of me asking when I am ordering groceries to get the same response each week of "I don't know". The other benefit is that I am sticking to my menu and utilizing my grocery budget much more efficiently.

It's amazing how a few small things can make such a large impact in your everyday life. These tools help me stay on schedule and meeting my deadlines every time.

Have some great organization tips to share? Place them in the comments!