High Maintenance Mom

I love being organized and I love computers so it would stand to reason that I would not only use my laptop computer's calendar, etc but that I would also use my cell phone's organizational components. I don't and I wasn't 100% sure why until I came across a great organization tool from FranklinCovey, the gold standard in organizational planners! The Simplicity for Mom's planner is "part of the company's "EasyPlan" product category, meaning that its design incorporates standard FranklinCovey planning principles, but gives you the flexibility to add your unique perspective to the planning you do. This involves space for recording tasks and events, a design that matches the needs of a mom, and priced to make it easier to stay organized: MSRP $24.95."...(more)

I like order! I don't pretend I don't and I don't apologize for it. Well before my kids were born I had a picture of how I wanted my home to be run and it is true to form to this day. So, when I knew my daughter would be going to school each morning and that my husband wanted to be the one to drop her off on his way to work, I knew I had to have a "morning rush" plan. It didn't happen overnight but it did help to visualize how I wanted things to run and make adjustments here and there. When my son was born it had to be adjusted more. My point is, you have to have a plan and stick to it (within reason). Here are my tips for successfully getting the kids ready for school.....

We were hoping to start pushing the kids' bedtime back but missed this evening. It's 9:30 PST (Pacific Standard Time) and they are both still awake. Tomorrow I plan to wake them up at their normal school time, which is a pain because I would like to sleep in. On Sunday I hope to wake everyone 30 minutes early and try to celebrate the time change I always dread. We will also try to shift our meals about 15 minutes during the day on Saturday and a little more than 30 minutes on Sunday (see Daylight standard time and kids for more information on the time changes). On Sunday night I will be making lunches, pouring milk cups, setting the table for breakfast, and preparing to use PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) when scheduling meetings even though I know I will have to look it up several more times this year. I'm thinking of finding happy spring music too. "Springing forward" is one of my least favorite weeks of the year. But with lowered expectations and some sort of crazy celebration, I'm hoping this one won't be so bad...

Have you seen the new Shutterfly personal photo web sites? I just created one for our family with pictures of the kids from this year. In the past I have sent pictures by email but the file sizes are large and not everyone likes their mailboxes to be full of kid pictures. To avoid filling mailboxes, I occasionally sent links to our Shutterfly pictures - with Shutterfly invited visitors do not need to join or have a password. But now that it's really easy to create a beautiful site to showcase the pictures, I plan to upload my pictures more often. I also like that I can choose who I want to view the site so my comments and pictures are private. Did I mention how easy it is? Click the Shutterfly image to check it out!

I've been testing out new calendars for the past few months and finally found one I love - Mom's Plan-It 2008 Softcover Engagement Calendar (if the calendar is not available from Amazon, try calendars.com). As a mom I still want a nice calendar but I don't want to pay as much I as used to. My calendar needs are: something light I can carry with me, nice paper that won't bleed, a subtle design (no thick black lines), open spaces for writing that are big enough to hold my schedule, and, if possible, stickers. All my appointments are also entered into Google Calendar because my husband and I can check each other's schedules before committing to events (more on that later)...

It amazes me how many misconceptions I had about being a working mother. I always knew it was hard, required time balancing, and who knows what to do about cooking, but geez. Now everyday I can hardly wake up. I was never organized before, how can I do it now? I am going to have to put my life (did i ever have one? oh right I was a graduate student...) on hold or embrace this new need to start sleeping at eight pm requirement. WHO does that? It is absurd.

Clutter is a big problem in our house. We were both pack rats well before we had kids and didn't anticipate how much effort would be needed to keep the house presentable with kids. Over the past year we've been working on a faster system for organizing our mail and we've managed to come up with something that works for both of us. The system is based on four baskets -- To Read, To Pay, To File, and To Shred...

About a month ago as I rushed from work to daycare and then home in a panic about the time and what we would have for dinner, I realized that there had to be a better way. Friends had mentioned that they made dinners for the whole week on Sunday but it sounded difficult to organize. I decided to start slowly, making Friday night pizza night. I buy the following items every week from Trader Joes...