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My No-Fuss Calendar for 2016

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Having a new year means starting a new calendar. I love putting everything in a new calendar. It seems like I can be super organized and have a fresh start. I do not use a big planner, although they look so cool. I know that I end up only using the monthly calendar with one big page for the month. For some reason my brain works better looking at all 30 days at once.

Here is a picture of this years calendar. I hang it by 2 big magnetic clips on the side of my refrigerator.

I sometimes take a picture of it with my phone so I have it with me if I need to look at it to make a decision while I am away from the house. I bought it at Office Depot.

Maybe I like the monthly view because we take a lot of weekend trips so I can see when they are coming up and sort of prep our weekends around them. For example, I can know if we have a trip one weekend that I shouldn’t really over schedule the next few days afterwards but I feel if I just look at our life one week at a time it doesn’t let me plan out slow times after busy times to let my family recover.

I also need a large box to fit multiple things in one day. With 3 kids we usually have overlap in activities. This means my calendar is too large to carry in a purse. I do not have nice handwriting. Being left-handed is my excuse.

I have a dream of using a pretty planner like this
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or this Lily

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I even owned a Lilly Pulizer one last year but never even cracked it open. My husband and I do use an app for our grocery list so we are not completely anti-high tech. 😉 I’ll talk about that in a few days because it helps us so much.

This is what works for me right now. How do you schedule everything?

Update Your Outlets to USB Ports

by Carolyn 3 Comments

We were recently at a party at a friends newly constructed home and my husband was so excited to see these outlets. He wanted one in our house too and went straight to Lowe’s the next day. It is such an awesome thing to have with all the power cords we need for our iPads and iPhones. I am going to have him give you some tips on how to update your outlets to USB ports too. Here is Matt, my awesome and super handy husband….

There are multiple options when it comes to selecting an outlet with USB ports. We went with the one pictured, one normal plug and 2 USB ports. The Best of Both Worlds if you ask me.

Make sure you turn off the power at the breaker before starting to remove the original outlet. You can do this a few different ways, I use a volt meter as seen in the picture below. Another easy way to do it by yourself is to use a clock radio. Plug it is and turn it on with the volume up sort of loud. You need to be able to hear it when you are at your breaker box. Most of the time your breakers are not well marked when it comes to wall outlets, so it becomes a trial and error to find the correct breaker. This can mean a lot of running back and forth if you are by yourself. This little trick will save you a lot of trips to the breaker box. When you don’t hear the music, you found the correct breaker. It is now safe to go to work.

The only thing to remember is that when you buy the new outlet, you will probably need a new wall plate too. As can be seen in the pictures above, the wall plates are different. The old one just had cutouts for the outlets themselves and the new one is a rectangular cutout.

Thanks Matt, I need to have him become a regular on my blog. He is not afraid to get into things and try to fix or build it himself. An awesome skill that I wish I had, he will tinker with things by himself to try and figure it out first before asking for help while I am just the opposite. I scream for help at the first little frustration. Can you say no patience? Ha Ha.

And now our home is up to 2015 technology, well at least one of our outlets.

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Personalize your Phone Charger

by Carolyn 1 Comment

Is everyone “borrowing your phone charger? We have several family trips with extended family and since we all have iPhones, the chargers get all mixed up. Sometimes I would be packing up at the end of our trip and had no clue if I had already packed our charger cords or if mine was still one of the many near an outlet.

So I saw this idea to personalize your phone charger with washi tape. It has made it so easy to keep track of my charger. I haven’t lost it yet and everyone knows it is mine.

Just take your favorite washi tape and wrap it around the outlet and the cord. This way each piece is marked as yours. Mine is peeling up a bit so I may need to redo it soon, but it has lasted almost a year which I think is pretty good for keeping up with my phone cord.

Now if only my kids would remember to plug the iPads in when the battery runs low instead of just leaving it on the table, we would be all set. Sigh… 🙂

My Packing List

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

Our family does a lot of weekend trips. Before kids it was easy to just throw my stuff in a bag and go but now it is a lot more stressful. The worst is getting somewhere and realizing you forgot something important like the camera part of the monitor! I have done that before. My husband is super organized but I missed that gene, one time I was packing and frantically wondering what else I needed to pack for the kids, he said he couldn’t understand why I didn’t have a packing list. I had no clue what he was talking about and once he explained it made perfect sense. Keep a list on either paper or your phone of what you packed and then the next time you can reference your list and you will be much faster and know that your aren’t forgetting anything!

Now I will share my embarrassingly messy list….ready….here is my packing list.

Ok now please erase that one from your mind and think of one with swirly fonts and pretty pink and green lines. Ha! This is actually a list I made (and used over and over again) a couple years ago since there are diapers and sippy cups listed on there…now I don’t have to worry about those items so have a little bit less to pack. Yea!

Whether you put it on paper or on your phone it helps so much to make sure I have all our important items.

We could also talk about whether you like to pack a few days in advance or whether you wait until the night before like I do. I swear I do have a system! I like to have every piece of laundry done and put away and I work on that for the 2 days prior to the trip and then the evening before I am able to pack everything at once. That is the way it works for me. How do you like to pack? Would a packing list help?