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Diana Rene: 0:06

You're listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene, and in 2017, I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show, all right.

Diana Rene: 0:51

So for today, on The Decluttered Mom podcast, we have a call-in show, which we haven't done one of these in a long time, like at least a year, and I really like these. They're really fun because I get to hear your actual voice and, as I've said many times on here, I feel like I'm speaking into a void, and so it's really been fun to get these call-in questions because I can hear you ask me. And so, if you're newer to the show and you've never heard one of these, we actually have a recording of a listener who called in and left a message with a question, and then I will be going into answering that question for her and it's something that I think will apply to almost everybody listening to this podcast. But if you have a question and you would like to leave it for me and potentially be on another different or a different episode of the podcast, then we have a link in the show notes for you that you can go. Click the link.

Diana Rene: 1:56

It's a really, really simple process. You just go to the web page and you click a button and you record it can. Can't be simpler than that, right? You don't have to register or do anything like that. We just ask that you leave your first name and the state you're calling from in your recording. But besides that, it's just fun. I feel like it's like a flashback to my childhood of the 80s and 90s listening to like the call-in radio shows you know. So, all right, let's just jump into today's episode.

Laura: 2:32

Hi there, this is Laura from Virginia. How do you organize your calendars? I have a work calendar. I have an 8x11 calendar that I keep in my office. I have a giant 2 foot by 3 foot calendar for the kids, for all their activities so that they can read and try to be responsible. I have a school lunch calendar on my fridge. I have a Google calendar. I have a Apple calendar that my ex shares for custody and things of that nature. How do you keep all of these organized and what should I do first?

Diana Rene: 3:11

Hey, Laura, this is a really great question, and I am sure this applies to many, many moms out there. So I love this question. This is something where we have to try and organize all of the different compartments of our brain and then put them into calendars and then help other people see everything that's going on at the same time. Right, that's essentially what we are doing, because you're talking about work, you're talking about school stuff, you're talking about activities, you're talking about things like that are scheduled for you and things that are scheduled for your kids, and you're talking about things that are scheduled for you and things that are scheduled for your kids, and you're talking about making sure that your ex knows the schedule, and you're also talking about making sure that your kids are responsible, and that's a lot, right? So let's first just acknowledge that you're managing a lot, you're juggling a lot, that you're managing a lot, you're juggling a lot, and so, as you figure this out or I should say, as you're working on it and you're figuring it out, and you're figuring out what system works best for you and your family there are going to be mistakes, like there are going to be times where you're like shoot, like, if only like I still had the multiple calendars and it worked in my brain, but it does, but it's not working also right now. So that's just something to keep in mind is that there are going to be times, as you work on this and as you figure it out, that you're still balls are still going to get dropped at some point. And that's just number one the nature of figuring out a new system. But number two just number one, the nature of figuring out a new system. But number two the reality of juggling, the amount of things that you're juggling and for the amount of people that you're trying to figure things out for right. It's just, there is not going to be a perfect system, so let's just start with that. Okay.

Diana Rene: 5:02

If I were in your shoes, what I would want to do is have a more central hub for all things calendar. For us, what works really well is having everything on Google Calendar, and then we use something called a skylight and it is essentially a framed screen that we keep in in the front room of our house and it displays the calendar, the google calendar, on there. It does other things also, but it does display the google calendar. So we have the skylight. I've had it for. Um, I actually bought it right before we had to move out of our house for the whole mold situation, and so I actually didn't even unpack it out of the box. I got it, it was like on my porch, I put it in my car and I took it to my mom's house and I was like I'm just going to use, like I'm going to figure this out after, and then we dealt with the mold. We were out of the house for five months. We moved back in. I honestly forgot about it and then one of my daughters actually remembered about it because she was excited for it. She reminded me about it. So we started using it this past spring and it's now September and it has been very useful.

Diana Rene: 6:19

I will say I don't necessarily think that you have to use the skylight Like it's. It's a pretty pricey uh screen calendar, um, and I have seen lots of hacks now on TikTok since TikTok, tiktok since I totally just sounded my age right there that you can use like an echo I think it's an echo show is don't quote me on that but one of the Echoes that have the screens. You can actually kind of hack to make your Google Calendar show up there also. So there are options, but just the point I'm trying to make is that we want to have one central location where all of these things can be seen by everyone that needs to see them, right? So I would say the one, well, maybe the two things that, okay, adhd brain, the one main thing that might not go on there, obviously is things for you and your ex with anything with custody. I don't really know what goes on that calendar and so I can't really say for sure, but that might have to be a separate calendar. As far as work, I will tell you what I do, but that might have to be a separate calendar. As far as work, I will tell you what I do and maybe this will work for you, maybe it won't. Again, this is one of those things where my situation is not going to directly apply to your situation, but I think you can take points from it and kind of create the best scenario for yourself and for anyone listening here.

Diana Rene: 7:47

So for me, for work, I actually put all of my work meetings or time blocks on my family calendar, so that way in the summer, if my girls are home and they know that I have to do something for work, they're able to just look at the calendar and see like, oh, this is like a podcast recording time, like we can't go into mom's office and unless there's an emergency, you know and they had a babysitter with them also but they're able to just see a little bit better what I'm up to. But more importantly for me, it's just that I'm not scheduling things for my family at the same time as work. So if I have an important podcast guest interview or I have an important meeting with my team or I'm doing a recording for content for my courses that have to be done that day, like I need to make sure I'm not scheduling volunteering at the girls' school that morning or a 504 meeting or something like that. So those are important, right? Things for work is important and we also have to manage that with home, and so anything for my work calendar it syncs to the calendar that we use as a family. It syncs to the calendar that goes on our Skylight. It syncs to the calendar that goes on our Skylight, anything that is not like a schedule, because I will put like specific to-dos on my calendar. So, for example, today I need to record two podcasts, so I have that blocked out on my calendar, but that doesn't necessarily need to go on the family calendar because it can be done at any time during the day. So hopefully that makes sense. But I do think combining at least the scheduling portion of those calendars can be really helpful for everyone involved, especially if you're working during times that the kids are not in school, and so that is something I would consider the reason I really love Google Calendar over some of the other online calendar systems.

Diana Rene: 10:02

Number one, I think it's just really easy to use. It's really easy to learn. You can do all of the color coding and all of that very simply. It's not like a complicated process. But also and I'm sure I'm sure other calendar systems have also integrated this already, but I just haven't looked into it but with Google calendar, if you're using their AI the Gemini, I think, is what it's called on a desktop or on your laptop or whatever I haven't been able to figure it out from my phone yet from the app.

Diana Rene: 10:31

But if you are like, if I'm on my laptop, okay, and I get the school lunch schedule, I can actually go into Gemini and I can upload it in there. So I just take the. I can take like a PDF, I can take a screenshot. So if I have a screenshot of like the whole month of school lunch, I can just upload the into Gemini and I can say, please add these daily hot lunch options to Google Calendar. And it will take like 20 seconds and think about it and then it will pop up and it will say like is this what you want added? And it will have all of it listed out and I'll say yes or I'll say no, I need to change this. And then it pops it into the calendar for you, which is really nice, especially with the beginning of the school year where you're getting like what feels like a thousand calendars right, like our schedules. Like I got my girls volleyball schedules, I got my girls soccer schedules, after school club schedules, and so I took all of those and I literally just took the PDF, uploaded them into Gemini and asked them to create events for these. And like I have to tell them tell it what to call it. So like I had to say like this these are Miss Eight's soccer games. So it puts her name game on the calendar for each of the dates and times, but it took like 40 seconds to upload her entire soccer schedule for the fall, which normally would have taken me at least 20 minutes to go through and create individual events for each of those, and so I love, love, love that Again.

Diana Rene: 12:15

I think most online calendar systems, if they don't already have something like that, will have something like that soon, just because of how fast AI is moving along. But that has been incredibly helpful. And so having the ability to do that, having the one central calendar system where I don't really look at the skylight for myself, but that's what my kids use, they will look at that. They look at that multiple times a day. There's other things on there that we don't really use. There's a tracker and things like that. We have other systems for that, but they primarily look at it for the calendar. They love knowing what's going on that day or that week or what's coming up, and so it's and it's kind of fun, right Cause it's like a touchscreen calendar, so it's just there there adds that fun factor for kids.

Diana Rene: 13:04

But so that having that one central location that everyone can look I usually look at my calendar from my phone or my laptop, but just having that ability for anyone to be able to look at it if needed, is, I just think, really going to be key in your specific situation and in most moms' situations. But you can even go so far as like having your meal schedule on there for the kids you know, like showing them like what's for dinner every night. If you have that planned out, you can have all sorts of things and so, like if we have spirit days, I put that on there. So really, Laura, for you having this type of system would eliminate that extra school lunch calendar. It would eliminate the big wall calendar for your kids, it could potentially eliminate your work wall calendar, but again, you might have to have some type of hybrid situation there, and then, really, the only thing that that wouldn't take care of would be that Apple calendar that you share with your ex. That I'm not sure how you could do that. That one's a little harder without knowing more information, and so it might be something where you can share the Google calendar with them. I don't know, so it's hard for me to answer that, but that would at least eliminate a lot of the other extra calendars that you have. And then, moving forward, anytime you do have a new event or a new calendar that you do have to incorporate. You can put all of that into the one central Google calendar.

Diana Rene: 14:37

And again, please look in your options. There are. I mean, I haven't even looked in a couple of months, but there are probably so many more options for a screen that you could have. I mean, honestly, you could even just have like an iPad. Like if you have an iPad in your house, you could have that and you could buy like a $3 stand on Amazon and you could just have that up in somewhere in a central location that your kids know how to be able to access it. There's so many options. Now I know there's more companies that have created these and don't get me wrong, I really like the Skylight. I think it's pretty easy to use. It's not like a difficult thing. It's just that I think there are so many options and Skylight is. It's just that I think there are so many options and Skylight is at least the last time I looked is still pretty pricey, and so there's just other options out there.

Diana Rene: 15:29

So, Laura, I hope this is helpful and if you're not, Laura and you're listening, I hope this was helpful for you also. I would love it if you would send me a DM on Instagram and just let me know. Let me know if this was helpful or if you have any follow-up questions. I would love to help you walk through those and I hope we will see you next week on The Decluttered Mom podcast. Thanks for hanging out and listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at thedeclutteredmom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.