How we keep it all organized amongst the crazy
We are linking up with our friends Shay and Erika this week for another edition of Let’s Look. This week it’s all about our calendars. We will show you how we manage to keep our hectic schedules organized on various types of devices and papers as well as a sneak peek into our September.
Life is busy. We have a lot of kids. Paige has a lot of jobs. There are extra curricular activities and school functions and never ending responsibilities. We’ve tried multiple ways to organize it all and here is what works best for us:
Jeni: I tried really hard to be one of those Erin Condren girls. I reallllly wanted to carry around my adorable personalized planner and have all my *ish together (written down perfectly in cute and colorful fonts). It didn’t happen. I think I made it one month and noticed I was doing double duty by writing in the planner then typing it a second time into my phone.
I’ve gone completely digital now. My life is on my phone. Everything from the kids sports schedules, co-parenting calendar, upcoming blog posts, Nick’s work commitments and so on…its all there.
I recently got an Apple Watch which has helped me to see events before they happen, I’m liking it much more than I thought I would and I have no idea why it took me so long to jump on board.
I am also a list maker. Sometimes my brain is a jumbled mess and it helps me to write it all down, prioritize, then cross it off. Colorful pens add some fun and these little notepads with semi inappropriate sayings on them give me life.
Here is an example of what’s in my calendar for today:
Blue is just for me, red is Style Duplicated and Orange is shared with Nick.
Nothing too exciting, the rest of the month looks super similar with soccer practices and lots of games mixed in. I am looking forward to picking Cavi up this Sunday and then BANFF is so soon!!!!!!
Paige: My Apple Watch broke. I tried to pair it today after a long hiatus and it just won’t do a darn thing. I need a new one because my life is also on my phone. It’s not solely on my phone though because Paige has a lot of jobs.
I share one calendar with Jeni for Style Duplicated things, one with Zach and my assistant for Paige Walker Photo and Paige Walker the actual person things. I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me to get down with the digital get down.
Lauren, my assistant of 7 years, will never be caught without her EC planner. It contains her entire life, and there is a library of all the other volumes of her past years at my house. You know, just in case some client has a question about something that happened in 2012.
We have our to do list on a dry erase board in between our desks. Sometimes we chat and have fun conversations and laugh and have inappropriate jokes going on, sometimes we sit in silence for hours with no sound other than the dry erase marker adding things to each other’s lists. It’s like that when you have been in work wife bliss for as long as we have.
Last but not least, the enormous paper wall calendar that has everything I ever need to know. I use my favorite cute pens, but my brain is a cyclone of ideas and I’m never organized enough in my thought process to use the correct color for the correct little color coded BS. Lost cause, I’ll own that.
September for me looks like this:
Not written on the calendar are, photo shoots with Jeni, most of my social stuff, blog posts to be done, kid’s social stuff and workouts, those just pop up as they pop up.
Photo shoots, kid’s dance and activities, dentist and doctor appts, lashes okuurrrrr, botox also okurrrrr, finally picking up my dog, more shoots, massages with my obsession which is Brandon, oh and just a little trip with my college besties! We will be bringing the heat to Banf, brace yourself.
Thanks for taking a peek into our crazy calendar driven world. What do you use to stay on top of it all?
Teach me your digital ways. I just cannot get it working for my life!
It’s a learning curve and different mindset, but once you switch you feel like a dinosaur for using a paper calendar.