Soccer Mom Calendar Organization

As sports moms (and dads) our schedules can get pretty crazy! Between church/work, home, volunteering and the girls’ school, soccer, volunteer work and their ever expanding social lives, my calendar is overloaded.  For the last couple of years I’ve used a combination of Google Calendar, Team Snap and a paper calendar/planner, but recently I’ve needed something else to really help manage all of my different obligations and communicate with my family.  

Enter Cozi– the family organizer.  I used to use Cozi about 6 years ago before I had a smart phone (Gasp!  how did I live??) and it had some nice features, but I stopped using it and began using Google Calendar.  A couple months ago after reading a blogger write about it, I decided to go back and check it out again.  It’s really been a great answer to not only managing my schedule, but our whole family.  The mobile app is great and even my girls have it on their phones.  My teenage daughter especially loves it and checks our schedules, adds to the grocery list (it isn’t me who keeps adding cookie dough ice cream!) and finds out what’s for dinner.  Even my hubby checks it once in a while and unlike sharing a Google Calendar, it doesn’t clutter up his own calendar.  I like the on-line option as well and it all syncs instantly.  I also print out a large monthly view and pin it up on our bulletin board (I’ve still got some old school in me!)  Cozi has both free and premium accounts.

Some great features…

• Shared color coded calendars 
• To do lists
• Meal plans
• Grocery/Shopping lists
• Journaling options
• Great iPhone/Android app
• Integrating internet calendars

The best thing about Cozi for me is the integration of the other calendars/sites that I use to manage specific areas of my life.

I’ve written about my love for managing soccer teams with TeamSnap many times… here and here specifically, but it’s an invaluable tool for me to manage my girls’ soccer schedules and teams.  In addition to all the great features on the site and app, the internet calendar syncs perfectly with Cozi (or Google or iCal) so that all their practices, games and events automatically show up on my Cozi calendar complete with addresses, directions and any special instructions.   No more writing events in on the paper calendar and crossing things out when they invariably change!  Not only do the events automatically appear, they are color coded to each girl.  Hooray!  TeamSnap has both free and premium accounts.  Our teams always have the premium accounts to take advantage of the extended features, but the calendar option is included in the free account.

Since I use Gmail for all my email, I used to use Google Calendar exclusively.  It is very powerful and has some great features like adding events straight from your email (hotel stays, etc…), but it’s not very “pretty” and it’s sometimes difficult to add all your shared and internet calendars to the iPhone calendar app.  I still use Google Calendar for work and some events but now I have it imported so that it automatically shows up on my Cozi calendar.  The only drawback with this is that you can’t edit a shared calendar and so occasionally I need to go to Google Calendar directly to update/correct things.  Google Calendar is free with your Google account.

Shutterfly isn’t just for pictures, they also have free “Share Sites”  which are great for sharing not only pictures, but information and calendars as well.  Over the years I’ve been a member of many shared sites for Classrooms, Girl Scouts, Charity Groups and more.  Although it doesn’t have the features I look for to manage our sports teams, it’s great for other activities and also has the option of a shared internet calendar which is easy to import into Cozi.  Shutterfly share sites are free, but have some premium options.

How do you manage your calendar???