Managing Your Analog Family in a Digital World
I remember growing up how we’d leave messages in the house for important tasks, notes or chores. My mom loved pinning notes to the fridge. We also maintained a wall calendar on the back of the pantry door with events written on each day (complete with pencil dangling by a string from the nail). I know some families that left messages for each other on the answering machine. Between kids’ activities, appointments and/or gift lists, maintaining your analog life can become a chore. Lucky for us growing up in age of Web 2.DOH! we have a myriad of tools at our fingertips to organize and then share important things with family members. I’ll share what my wife and I use in our household:
Google Calendar. This one is a must for us. About a year ago we started putting our appointments and tasks on a mutually shared calendar in Google. As Gmail users it made sense. Google allows you to create various calendars (color coordinated!) all in one place. We have a calendar for ‘Play’ for instance, which consists of our independant or joint activities we have committed ourselves to. This could be parties we are attending, or dinner dates. This is extremely helpful to us as it prevents having to ‘check with my spouse’ when an invite is extended. If She is at work and a co-worker offers baseball tickets, rather than have to wait to track me down and see what is ‘on the calendar’, she can simply look it up. Of course, this requires diligence but we have pinky-swore that ‘if it is not on the google calendar, than assume we are free’. We have other calendars for Appointments, Travel, Birthdays and Work functions.
Kaboodle. We recently discovered this great site which allows you to maintain wish lists via a browser. Its neat little feature is a Firefox plugin that will add a button to your toolbar allowing you to add items you see on the Web to your ‘Kaboodle List’ with a click of the button. The price, description and more are automatically populated. We’ve taken full advantage of this site by creating lists for our home furninshing wants, wardrobe ideas and She even created one for beads she wants for her Pandora bracelet. There are plenty of similar sites, like Amazon, that offer wishlists, so it is the concept here that really counts. At Christmas, we simply emailed our families our Kaboodle links (you can have public and private lists).
Flickr. Again, I won’t say Flickr is the best photo sharing site out there, but having an online photo gallery is a must for today’s family. Long gone (unfortunately) are the days of maintaining complex photo albums you would need to print, bind and then lug around to share. We take pictures obsessively, upload them from the camera on our travels and email links back home for friends and family to follow along. My parents and brother have created accounts as well. Through groups and tagging, a picture from a particular trip or family event is but a fingertip away.
DVR Scheduler. Ok, this is a stretch, but honestly is a lifesaver for us. DIRECTV (and I believe Tivo) allow you to schedule programs to your DVR via the Web. Something came up and you won’t get home in time for the game? Log into your account and set your DVR to record your program. Maybe not a to-do list item, but if you are a busy family, at least you know you won’t miss your favorite show because you have to work late.
Grocery List Generator. This firefox plugin is pretty slick. We use it to create an online list as we think of things during the day which can be printed out or ported to Her iPhone for checking off as we go along at the store. It also maintains ingredients you may have at home so you know what not to buy to make a particular recipe - which is also built into the extension. I could lump in online recipe sites here as well.
Google Docs. We probably have memberships to a hundred different accounts. Between Frequent Flyer numbers to Gym memberships, we maintain a number of memership IDs offline and on. We use Google Docs to make sure at any moment we can have access to these numbers. A good example of how this has saved me in the past was when making airline reservations. I needed access to her American Airlines account to check her mileage balance. I was able to log on and get that information from our spreadsheet in Google Docs and not have to bother (or wait) for Her to respond. I sync my docs automatically with Doc Syncer.
Ta Da List. We do not use this currently, but it looks pretty cool. How about an online to-do list? 37 Signals has one available called Ta Da List that can offer you a simple list to maintain and share across the household. Perhaps a Travel/Packing Checklist or 2008 resolutions?
How have you managed your analog life online?
