There is so much to do every day and when you have a family the
tasks multiply! Your children have school, clubs, pick-ups,
drop-offs, playdates, lessons etc. Of course, you have your job,
appointments, grocery shopping, cooking, and hopefully a bit of a
social life. Almost 70% of Canadian families have two working
parents. Of that 70%, three-quarters have both parents working
full-time. Most families feel like they need a spreadsheet to keep
track of everyone's comings and goings.
Every busy mother feels pulled between work and family, and
planning usually falls on mom's shoulders. Some moms use a big
family calendar in the kitchen, others use a shared web-based
calendar, and there are those who use random sticky notes to try
and remember everything. In a world full of smartphones, it is time
to explore the apps that will bring your current organization
systems into the 21st century. The following apps can help you stay
on top of your to-do list, plan your meals, and maybe even allow
you to read a book.
Family Organizers
Cozi Family Organizer
The Cozi Family Organizer is essentially a family calendar that
everyone can see and share. You can add appointments, set reminders
and upload to-do lists. This can be done either on your smartphone
or on the web, either way your updates will be synched
automatically to all the users of the account. You can set up Cozi
to send emails or texts to your family confirming appointments.
There is also a journal section that allows you to save
photos.
Remember the Milk
Remember the Milk is another app that allows you to manage all
of your tasks from anywhere. It can send email, text, or IM
reminders about the tasks and appointments in your account. You can
also share the lists and tasks with your contacts and easily create
priority lists.
OurKids.net Summer Camps Locator
Our Kids.net Summer Camps Locator will help you find a summer or
March break camp easily. You can search for a camp by GPS, address,
location, age, gender, type, or budget. You can also browse using
list or map view. Each listing provides information about the
camp's culture, contact information and directions. You can save
camp profiles to your favourites and easily share the profile via
email.
Grocery Shopping and Meal Prep
AllRecipes Dinner Spinner
AllRecipes is one the most popular recipe sites on the internet.
Their app, Allrecipes Dinner Spinner, gives you instant access to
their collection of step-by-step recipes, ratings and reviews. You
can save your favourites to a recipe box, create a shopping list,
and search by ingredient.
Grocery
IQ
Make any trip to the grocery store more efficient with this app.
Create your weekly grocery list using Grocery IQ's huge database of
items. You can create easy to filter lists of favourites and you
can update it on the go. The app also saves previous grocery lists
so you don't have to start from scratch each time you need a new
list.
Big Oven
Carry 350,000 recipes in your phone with Big Oven. Big Oven also
lets you create grocery lists, menu plan, save recipes from other
sites, or even upload your own. Once you plan your menu you can
email it to yourself and put a print-out on your fridge. The app
will also create grocery lists based on the recipes you have
chosen.
What to do While You Are Waiting for Your
Kids
Audiobooks from Audible
You probably spend a lot of time waiting for your kids to finish
their activities. It's a good time to catch up on your reading, but
you may not have room in your purse for a novel. Download
Audiobooks from Audible and you can enjoy listening to any of their
180,000-plus titles.
Zite
Zite is an online magazine of sorts. The app allows you to
choose content from thousands of topics. You pick what you want to
see and that content is delivered to you in a simple interface. As
you use Zite, it pays attention to what you like and customizes the
content for you.
Kobo Reading App
When you are a busy mom, finding time to read is a challenge. If
you are like many and have a Kobo e-reader, then this app is for
you. Never be without your current e-book. The Kobo Reading App
automatically syncs with the Kobo e-reader, so it brings you to the
exact spot where you were last reading. You may forget your Kobo,
but chances are you always have your phone with you.