Organizing the Modern Family. Keeping my fam, work-life, and marriage organized while only home half the month: its a work in progress!

Even before I started my traveling job, D and I found our schedules to be unrealistically complicated. All parents no matter what they do find themselves managing a complicated schedule, this complication quadruples when you have a medically fragile child. We have doctors appointments regularly, various therapies, school obligations, work schedules, child care schedules, and so much more I cannot remember them all here.

Our solution, Google Calendar! It is a life saver! (BTW I do not get paid by Google or any of these companies--I just use them to keep me sane!)

We have 4 google calendars for our marriage and family. Various other people have access to certain calendars depending on who they are in our lives. This feature is amazing and allows us to silently communicate all the different things going on in our lives to the people who need to know it! You can decide if people can make changes to the calendar or just view it. You an change these permissions anytime. You do need to do this with a computer as the mobile version makes it more difficult to change permissions.

Our fam calendar has all the kids doctors appointments, therapies, sports practices, recitals, birthday parties, family meetings, our date nights, and on and on. Grandparents and aunties have access to this calendar. 

Grandma who helps us with our child care quite a bit has her own calendar she shares with us with her own appointments and commitments so we can plan accordingly. 

We also have a child care calendar that our sitter has access to look at to plan her time with the kids. 

Then I have my work schedule that hubby D and grandma have access to look at. D has his own work schedule for planning his business working days.

Then my favorite calendar we have is our US calendar for our marriage. This calendar has times for us to sit done and go over finances for the month, household chores, goals, do some relationship work, or just remind D and I to stop and spend some time together. I even put my monthly PMS time on the this calendar so D knows to give me some extra space and patience that week.

This requires a commitment from everyone involved to look at the calendar daily and adhere to it before scheduling stuff. 

When we started using the calendar as a family it definitely took some adjusting to but we are pros now! Enter my traveling job and we were ready for adding another level of calendar complication, I now have big blocks of me being gone on the calendar with flight times added on my travel days. 

I also use Tripit to help keep my trips in order. It reads my emails and puts an itinerary together of my flight schedule, rental car info and hotel info. I then send those itineraries to my family so they know when and where I will be when I travel for emergency reasons. Or for D to surprise me with flowers 😉!

As a traveling mom I may not be able to do the housework,  take kids to appointments, do bedtime or other parent duties while away but I can at least keep things organized by scheduling the appointments and extracurricular activities from afar. I also can put reminders or tasks in Google Calendar in to remind us to give the dogs their monthly preventatives, do certain chores, and other to do list items.

The other aspect of Google that we love is the shopping list. We have a Google Nest home and can add stuff to the list from talking to it in our kitchen or adding it on our phones, then we look at it in the store and check off the stuff as we get it. This also allows me to help with the task of shopping from afar. I am always trying to find ways I can help D while I am away and take things off his plate. 

I am still learning other tips and tricks to keep us knowing what we all need to be doing when and where. Everyone who sees my Google Calendar gasps when they see all the colored blocks but for me it means we are on top of it! 

Here are some pics of some of my travels in the last 2 months:

Here my schedule organizer pinterest board! https://www.pinterest.com/adrifish22/schedule-organizers/