Crystal was recently interviewed by The Minimalist Mom podcast about family collaboration. One of the complaints we hear the most from moms is that they end up being largely responsible for coordinating all the family plans, schedules and logistics. That's a big job! And it's one that the calendar can help with!
As our kids have gotten older, Crystal and I have leveraged the calendar to create conversations around the family schedule to ease the burden of being the family coordinator. Especially when tethered with weekly calendar check-ins, The Essential Calendar is a visual reminder that everyone can use to make family life run more smoothly.
The pen and tape (while also being cute accessories) play a key role in making the calendar a powerful family collaboration tool. You can use the tape for individual activities, or specific types of activities like family vacations. In our house soccer activities are yellow tape while school activities are orange. At a glance, I can see which weekends don't have any school or soccer activities so that we can plan something fun (light blue tape) or just take it easy.
My husband loves looking at the calendar and finding the next light blue stretch because that means a vacation is coming up. When we don't have much light blue on our calendar he'll suggest that we need to schedule in some fun.
With the pen clipped to the calendar, everyone in the family is able to update their activities independently. If something is cancelled, erase it. If something is rescheduled, erase it and write it in.
With our calendar in a central area of our kitchen, we can strike up conversations about days that have a lot of tape colors or events written on them because that means it will be a full day for our family.
The calendar + accessories are designed to lighten and share the burden that moms carry for keeping everything organized.
Hear Crystal talk more about this on the Minimalist Mom Podcast.