Set-it-and-forget-it appointments, like the dentist, usually work without any fuss. My last visit wasn’t so smooth.
The office sent a reminder text in a reasonable window, one to two weeks out. My appointment wasn’t until November, so I figured I had plenty of time to reschedule. Then I got the text that said my appointment was in two days and I hadn’t confirmed it. Oh man.
I had a new Bible study at the same time, and I had meant to call and reschedule sooner. The office was gracious and moved my appointment. If they hadn’t been able to, I would have skipped the Bible study. Either way, it was stress for no good reason.
It seems like there is always a conflict. Managing a family calendar so that things don’t collide can feel like a part-time job, and some weeks it feels like a full-time one.
Most of us are not failing at showing up. People go to work, kids go to school, and appointments get kept. The trouble starts when something is missed, when two things land on the same hour, or when the week is simply too busy. Often that comes down to how the information reaches us. Last week’s post on money and paperwork started in the same place: bills arrive by mail, by email, and by app, and nothing about that is organized for you. Schedules are the same. A household that struggles with a calendar often has a structure problem.
Where Your Schedule Information Comes From
Think about how many ways you get information. It comes in the mail. It comes in an email from school, a text from a friend, or a paper flyer in a backpack. It comes as a quick conversation with your spouse in the kitchen. It comes from your kids over dinner, and not always in a timely manner.
Add digital calendars, work calendars, and phones that follow us everywhere, and the lines blur. Work can come home with you at any hour. It makes sense that keeping one tidy calendar feels hard.
How I Keep Track of It All
I’ll start with what we do, since it helps to see a real household and not a perfect one.
My husband and I keep a shared digital calendar with our family events on it. When something affects his workday, I send the invite to his work email so it also lands on his work calendar.
We also keep a paper family calendar that hangs where everyone walks past. It shows two months, the current one and the next, and it is for anything out of the norm. Anything everyone should see goes there, whatever their age. The two calendars are not always in sync. An event may make it onto one and not the other, depending on where I was when I heard about it. School events, for example, go on the paper calendar and usually never reach the digital one. When I need to check something, I know to look at both.
I also have a personal planner. That is where my weekly tasks go, along with anything that affects only me (and sometimes includes what’s on the family calendars). Regular weekly routines live there too. Wednesday’s sports practice is in my planner, not on the family calendar, because it isn’t out of the ordinary.
So I don’t have one calendar. I don’t think that is realistic today, with a family calendar, work calendars, and a few things in between. What I do have is a short list of places I check before I say yes to anything.
If you are deciding how to set this up, three questions will take you most of the way:
- Which calendar is the main one? It might be a shared digital calendar, a paper calendar, or one of each like ours.
- Who needs to see it? In our house, the shared digital calendar is just my husband and me. Two of my kids are in college and have their own devices, so we tell them what’s coming up and they put it on their own calendars. Two don’t have devices yet, so the paper calendar is where they look.
- Who adds to it? Some families have one person who enters everything. In others, everyone adds their own events.
There is no single right answer. The right setup is the one your household will use. And if something gets missed anyway, which it will on some weeks, you still have to deal with it. A calendar is meant to catch most things, not all of them.
What Goes on the Calendar
I sort things by who needs to know. Some things are only my business, some are for my husband and me, and some are for the whole family.
School schedules. I subscribe to each school’s calendar, then write what matters on our paper calendar. One school sends a newsletter every Friday, and I add anything new then. For the others, I have to go looking. When it’s time for sports sign-ups, for instance, I search for the information myself, since it doesn’t arrive on its own.
Work and childcare coverage. This is who is where and who is picking up. In our house I’m home, so I handle school pick-ups, sick days, and snow days, and none of that gets scheduled. If both parents work outside the home, this is worth putting on the calendar.
Appointments, including the ones that repeat. I handle my appointments and the kids’, and my husband handles his. I tried to manage his once, but he had to cancel too many because of work, so I stopped. When I say handle, I mean I’m also the one providing the transportation. Haircuts and other recurring appointments fit here too. I schedule the next one before I leave, the same way I do at the dentist. Oil changes are different for me, since I don’t pre-schedule them, though I know some people do. Either approach works, as long as the date ends up somewhere you will see it. Seasonal and annual tasks have their own system in A Simple Home Maintenance System, so they don’t need to crowd your weekly calendar.
Play and weekend activities. Anything beyond ordinary playing with the neighbors, scheduled or not, goes on the paper calendar. It also goes on the shared digital one. These are the events that are easy to say yes to in the moment, so this is where double booking tends to start.
Extended family gatherings. These go on both the shared and paper calendars. If you celebrate with extended family, getting dates picked early makes everything else easier. I wrote about this in The Hidden Cost of Holiday Over Commitment and I’ll go through it more on November 30.
Protecting Family Time
Family time is easy to treat as whatever is left after everything else has been scheduled. In a busy week, nothing is left. It works like saving first when you budget: if you wait until the end, there is nothing to put aside.
Putting it on the calendar the same way you would an appointment gives it a place, and it helps you see when you are about to overbook. Before you say yes to something new, look at the week. If the family time is already there, you can decide whether the new thing is worth moving it.
We try to protect Sundays. We still have activities, and family, sports, or friends are sometimes here. But in a blended family, this was important to us. It seemed everyone thought our time was their time. We had to carve out downtime and stick to our guns.
Groceries and Errands
A standing grocery day is a common suggestion, but it doesn’t work for me. I have a flexible schedule, so my weeks don’t repeat. I sometimes prefer to go into the store, but when I’m busy I schedule a pickup. The calendar helps me decide which one fits that week.
I’ll go into this more in the November 23 post, which covers food and household supplies.
A Simple Way to Start
You don’t need to rebuild your calendar and planning system this week. Observation is a better first step. Ask yourself what frustrates you most about your calendar right now, and what is working well. Notice where information reaches you and where it gets lost along the way.
When you do start adding things, put them on a calendar as they come in. Where they go depends on where you are when the information shows up. If my phone isn’t with me, it goes on the paper calendar. If I’m out and get an email, I may add it straight to the shared digital calendar. What matters is that it gets written somewhere you will see it. Then, before you say yes to anything, check your main places. That one step would have caught my dentist and Bible study conflict much sooner.
Next Monday, November 16, I’ll cover chores and the work around the house, and how a household decides who does what.
