Tuesday, August 23, 2011

GET ORGANIZED! Before you get back to school!





OK. So, I'm not the most organized of people. My coming of age moment was when we drove over an hour on a Saturday to a birthday party in New Jersey (everyone up, showered, fed, presents wrapped... you know the drill) to quickly learn from the Little Gym that the birthday party was actually the next day. Really?! At that moment I knew I needed an intervention.

I went home and began a search for the perfect wipe board/calendar system. I was lovin' the one from Pottery Barn since I could customize it with different modules and wipe it down each month for a fresh start. This thing has certainly improved my overall organization -- and I haven't gone to a birthday party on the wrong day since!

I bought two magnetic wipe board calendars and two display rods (don't forget the display rods or you won't be able to hang them). I hit the mother load with 50% off and no shipping so the total came to $59.98. They look great in the laundry room and make it easy to check the day's events before running out the door. Now if I could only figure out a better way to remember to actually write everything down on it :) I guess it's baby steps!

Product Review: I have gotten my money's worth out of the Pottery Barn organization system. This thing has revolutionized my life (ok, maybe now I'm going overboard). Organization systems are ON SALE RIGHT NOW FOR 20% OFF. Go buy them before school starts!
★★★★★
Website Review: God do I love Pottery Barn.com. If I took pictures of everything I have from Pottery Barn I'd run out of space! Make sure to get on their mailing list since they're always running specials.
★★★★★

5 comments:

  1. Looks great but wouldn't work for me. I can't do a white board for calendar because how do you keep track of months ahead? I have a big calendar on my fridge where I jot down everything. I got it at staples. It seems to work. I'm now trying to find a program where I can transfer my calendar to my iphone/ipad. I was going to use google calendar but don't want to pay for the app for ipad. I think I may try using cozi and see how that works out.

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  2. Agreed. It can be tough only having two months up at a time. You could buy more calendars and make a cool wall out of them?? We put dates on the top for future months so we remember to add them later. We rarely think that far in advance (again, I'm just not that organized!) I have an electronic one for work but needed the big visual one for life! Thanks for commenting!

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  3. Hi! I am looking for a solution for my son to manage his school projects and also had the "month ahead" issue. I think he would be okay with two side by side, but would always want the months to be in chronological order, so we would have to be able to switch them readily. Do the hangers let you do that? Digging the blog...love it!

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  4. I used to use those crisscross bulletin boards, one color for each child, and one for each of us--it seemed excessive when I first started it, but we quickly found that it was an easy way for everyone to know just where anyone was supposed to be on any given day. Later I got the girls some for their rooms by their desks to track their school assignments (for them to track them, NOT me!), worked out really well--at least the majority of the time. That's not to say we never had a last minute snafu when something fell off the board, but, stuff happens! Also our sitter always knew where to find us if she needed us when she was there.

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  5. Meg, yes, the boards easily slide off the hanging rod. So at the end of the month I slide them both off, wipe off the month that just ended and move the other month up. Your son would love to write on the boards -- gives you that "teacher feel"! Jacob has a smaller one in his room his likes to keep. Hr likes to know what's going on the next day :)

    Since my boards are by the door, friends are always adding their birthdays and other events for me. It's always fun to see what's made it to the board! Bird Lady, thanks for adding! I LOVE the idea of making our kids accountable!

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