What is the Roman Family CIA? It stands for the Calendar Information Area! Every family is busy these days, and every family needs their own method for keeping everyone on track for appointments, practices, events, and other scheduled activities. There are unlimited ways to organize your own family to keep everyone up to date, but I wanted to show you what works for us. It isn't the end all and be all answer for everyone. If you already have a working system, that's wonderful! Heck, I'd love for you to share it with me! I'm always looking for new ideas to fine tune my own systems or to refresh our lives to find a new and better way of doing things. And I would love to pass along new ideas to readers. If you don't have a system in place, perhaps mine could be a jumping off point for you to create your own. The idea is to just get motivated to get your family coordinated so that you don't double-book appointments, miss events, or just plain get overwhelmed with it all. When you can see at a glance what's going on when some one calls to plan a playdate, it makes it all so much easier.
Here's the overall view of our system, and I'll describe each component and how to put it in place:
This is our main information center of the home. (Sorry for the fuzzy photo!) It's in the laundry room. Our back door coming in from the garage is here, and the room is the entry into the kitchen. It's where we come and go every time we leave or come home. It's the most logical choice for us for location. To construct it was very inexpensive. The background is made up of 12" x 12" cork tiles that you can buy in any store in the office supply aisle. I simply tacked them to the wall with tiny little nails. The bottom 2 rows are 3 across, and the top row only has 2 tiles. In the upper right corner, I hung a very inexpensive mail organizer/key rack purchased at Target years ago. I think it was $14? The big calendar is a blank desk calendar, again purchased for a couple bucks in the same aisle as the cork tiles. I fill in my own month and dates with a marker. I just tacked it up with thumbtacks to the cork tiles! Easy as pie!
In this next photo we have the family calendar. This is the most important item in this area. I have used different colored markers to keep it easier to read. I make sure to immediately put any items on the calendar so that we always know what we have coming up for each member of the family. I also make sure to illustrate the holidays for the kids, so that they can "read" the calendar, too! They like to be able to count down and have reference points. Having the calendar located here also keeps us in check as we walk out the door. We can see one last time before we leave what we have going on so that we don't miss anything or make plans when we're out that might conflict.
The section above the family calendar is also helpful. We hang our keys here so they don't get lost. I store my return address labels here; the markers for the calendar are always within reach. The school calendar and monthly cafeteria menu are posted. And any miscellaneous small papers that I might need are either clipped to a pinch clip here or tucked into the mail slot. I also have a laundry chart card tacked to the board for reference. It does come in handy!
In this last section we keep some other miscellaneous but pertinent information for the family. I do have a second calendar. It was a freebie from my alma mater, Carthage College, and it is handy for looking ahead in the year rather than trying to manueuver the big family calendar. We also have specific classroom information, bus schedules, and our family rules posted here for all the kids to see. That's a big one in our house -- if the rules are there for them to look at, they can't say they didn't know them!
As you can see, it's not high tech. It isn't a huge server with touch screen monitors installed in each room of the house, and fingerprint identification encryption blah blah blah... it's good old fashioned marker and paper. Sometimes simple can work! It's what works for us. And I carry a planner system in my purse. Yes, my cell phone has calendar capabilities, but I love the pen and paper system. It's just me! But then again, I still write letters and postcards, and I love to put little notes in lunch boxes. Don't get me wrong. I don't save paper. I don't hoard junk mail and old bills and stuff. I just still am an afficiando of the handwritten form of communication. I don't have a blackberry, because my Franklin Planner still serves it's purpose!
So, do what works for you. But do something! Organization is key in this day and age to keep our homes running smoothly and happily! It will keep the stress levels lower, too. Trust me!
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