As many of you know, I am the most disorganized person on the planet. I buy just about anything that says it will help me find my keys, remember my grocery list, remind me to make calls, or to take showers. My hubby knows to hide all phones when I’m watching an infomercial.
Recently, I tried using the chalk board I have in the laundry room as a massive calendar that everyone could put their info on – from practices, to supply lists, to meetings. We each got our own color chalk, so that I would know who wrote what. Also, I thought it would be really pretty and Martha Stewart-esque of me.
My daughter immediately drew a bumblebee in June 28th, so that means someone may get stung? If someone does, I’m totally having her tell fortunes for extra dough this summer (screw the lemonade stand). My son put one practice (though he has 3/ week) on the board … in the wrong color. And at some point, someone drew boobs on June 24th which I think means there’s a wet t-shirt contest that day that or my hubby is paying for implants … (I haven’t quite figured out the symbols.)
Because my calendar was a massive failure I found something tech-wise that I love love love! I was given a copy of Microsoft 365 to download in hopes that I would do an interview with someone about the benefits for moms and as it turns out I’m OBSESSED! Which kinda surprised me.
We are an Apple/Mac family, so to be frank, I wouldn’t have thought of downloading the program, but I know the world speaks PC. I already have to convert every file I have from Pages into Word or Numbers in Excel before sending it, so working in the actual program is so much easier. But what I truly love is Outlook! It’s like my massive chalk board done right. We synced it to all our phones, my Mac and my iPad and (you get 5 items to sync) and everyone put in their stuff and I learned to color code it. And it’s so pretty and neat and organized and remindery!
OneNote (which I already had as an app) totally rocks! I made lists in it and my hubby added things like buy shampoo, and my kids added things like, buy Kit Kats, and my dog added things like, buy me a new chew toy … the cat is getting soggy.
Plus every blog I started to write, I could pick up on a different electronic device and continue, which makes me happier than I can ever express!
Oh, and my Cloud is bigger. My Apple Cloud was like a drizzler and I had to pay for 10 extra GBs it! My new cloud has an extra 20 GB SkyDrive storage, (it’s more of a storm cloud).
And sooo, all that said, I did the interview to get more ideas from TechMamas.com founder and editor-in-chief, Beth Blecherman who is a dear friend. She just recently released a new book, My Parent Plan, which provides parents with advice on how to apply business principles to parenting. You should check it out. The interview is above and I think her tips are fabu.
Let me know if you use the 365 or were thinking of getting it and if you have any other time saving tips for me that you’ve found.
XO- Jenny From the Blog
Yes, this post was sponsored (thank goodness, cause a chick’s gotta work), but I ONLY write about things I love and that I think my readers would love, (which means this chick doesn’t work nearly as often as she could … but she gets to sleep guilt-free at night).
Feel free to share with anyone mom who needs some organization!
