Works for me Wednesday

I've joined another "carnival" and I think this is a great one! One thing that I love about blogging is all the awesome tips I've found and discoveries I've made! So here is my first edition of "works-for-me Wednesday" (aka: wfmw).

I love my Google Calendar! I first learned about Google Calendar from simplemom as she taught me how to menu plan (I love the system, and it is working for me, as far as planning goes - although some days I still don't want to cook!). I've taken it a step further and added a bunch of different "calendars" that I can merge all into one, or I can just look at the one's I want to see. Here are all of my different calendars, and what I use them for:

• MY calendar: for my appointments and general info (family birthdays...)
• Each of my kids: This is where I put all their school schedules, sports and extra curricular activities. If we can't remember which day they have PE, I can just click on their name and look at their week. I put the football carpool schedule on Aaron's calendar as well. I love putting all of this info in electronic form, and throwing all the papers away!
• Menu Planning: see above link (note that I mislabeled mine "Mean Planning" - I left it that way cuz I think it's funny).
• Roman: Roman created his own calendar with his gmail account, and was able to share it with me. He puts all of his appts and refereeing schedule here. This is wonderful since I no longer have those unexpected single mom evenings!!
  
• Preschool: This is were I set up my daily lesson plans. Through the summer I've come across links of great ideas for preschool. When I started this calendar, I copied the links in the appropriate weeks/months. Now I will remember to use them!
• TO DO LIST: This is where I put all of those things I need to do. I pick a certain day to do them. For example, on Mondays I'm home doing lessons plans, laundry, and bills. When I think of something that needs to be done while I'm at my desk, I put it on my TO DO LIST calendar for the upcoming Monday. I also put where I need to shop and on what day - I list the items that are on sale that I need to get or look at, and/or what things I have coupons for. (This is great for the Costco coupons... it seems like they mail out the coupon book 10-14 days before you can use it. By the time they are valid, I've forgotten about them! Now I just put "Costco" on my to do list, and I also listed all of the coupons that I wanted to use.)
  

I can color coordinate the calendars, and filter them in or out, depending on what I want to see. I can look at it and add to it anywhere that has Internet access, and I can also share them with others! I can also change the view - monthly, weekly, 5 days, or agenda style!! This came along for me just in the nick of time - right when I thought I wouldn't be able to track all of the craziness of this life!!