Without it, you may take a wrong turn somewhere and find yourself lost. Once someone is lost, it may take some time before they get back on track, and they usually arrive to their destination a bit later than they would have liked.

When you have a schedule, you can look at it and see what you need to do each day. You’ll know if you are on track, and if you aren’t, what you need to do to get back on course.

How To Make a Schedule

One of the first things to do when making a schedule is to write down all the things you have to do on a piece of paper. Some people keep separate work and family schedules, and if you decide that would work best for you, you can divvy those tasks up later. For now, simply write out everything that needs to be done on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis.

Once you have everything written out and in front of you, it’s time to start sorting between the common themes. You can do this by assigning a highlighter color to each theme (such as family, work, daily, monthly, weekly) or by taking out another piece of paper and writing those columns on it, and rewriting all the tasks into the appropriate column.

Now that you have all of your tasks sorted out, try to give a time estimate to each one. You may even want to time yourself for a week or two on these tasks, as you may be very surprised at how long some things take.

For instance, you may think it only takes 45 minutes to go to the grocery store, but in reality it could take an hour and 15 minutes. You may think it only takes 15 minutes to run up to the school and pick up the kids, but may find it actually takes 25 minutes.

In many cases, people underestimate the time it takes to do things, and this is one of the reasons they think they aren’t getting enough done. By timing yourself, you will get a visual picture of your time. When you see how long it really takes to accomplish your regular tasks, you will be able to see how many things you can fit into a normal day. You won’t constantly be trying to push yourself to do more.

Once you have written down your tasks and estimated the time it takes to accomplish them, you can start planning your schedule. Some people like to have a daily schedule that is very organized with certain tasks assigned to certain times and others prefer to keep a weekly schedule that is more flexible.

It’s that time already – back to school time!  A Staples commercial once said “it’s the most wonderful time of the year.”  What are your thoughts on back to school?  Here are some tips to help make it a wonderful time:

* Stock up on supplies needed throughout the year and create a homework center.  A clearly labeled, plastic draw unit makes a great homework center where you can store paper, pencils, markers, glue, and anything else your student needs to complete assignments.

* Set up a command center with files or bins for school papers that must be signed and returned to school, homework or projects that are ongoing, library books, and anything else that comes to and from school.

* Install hooks near the door to hang backpacks, and jackets.

* If your child packs a lunch, set up an area in the kitchen to store prepackaged lunch items and the supplies needed to assemble sandwiches, etc.

* If your child purchases a school lunch, post the menu inside a cabinet door or on the refrigerator.

* Post a calendar in a central place to track all of your family’s activities.

Studies show students thrive in an organized environment.  I hope these tips will help your students have their best year ever and a little extra time to just be kids

Once the kids are settled into their school schedule, it’s time to gear up for some organizing of your own.  It’s the perfect time to catch up on organizing projects around the house so that by the time the holidays arrive, your home is organized and you are able to enjoy the festivities without all of the stress!

Cathy Bates is owner of Practical Solutions, a professional organizing company that provides organizing services for your home or office.  Practical Solutions is offering a free organizing workshop on Monday, September 8, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. at Citibank in Yucaipa to jumpstart your organizing efforts.  You can register at www.psorganizing.com or call (909)810-3719.

Short of writing what needs to get done each day on my children’s foreheads it seems something gets forgotten each day. This service is great. If you are only sending reminders to yourself the service is FREE. Need to send a reminder to more then one person or to your cell phone ? The fee is ‘negotiable’ you heard me right ‘negotiable’.

I love the ability to send my message reminders to more then one person and the ‘simplicity’ of this service. I find at times that some services are overwhelmingly full of gadgets to the point of needing two days to learn how to use them. Memo to me, is simple, fast, efficient.

My email text reminders hit my cell phone within 30 seconds ! (I am in Canada). I have reviewed and used a few other “online reminder services” and as of today Memo To Me is officially the favorite of the Almost Always Organized Mom.

I also forget birthdays. Now I am reminded to call special family and friends on their birthday!

The service allows you set up your co workers, friends, family and send your email reminders to everyone. I love that you don’t have to use SMS which can become costly.

The only thing I seem to still not remember is to get the garbage out.

So I am heading back to the Memo to me website to send myself a text message reminder for every Thursday am at 10 am.

I have not been paid for this review moms – this really is just my experience with a GREAT free online tool to help you “remember” the 9 million things on your busy mom to do list.

~ The Almost Always Organized Mom

Well I received the best Mothers Day gift this week and now I have to share it with all the other busy moms out there! Someone twittered a link to me last week for Jott. It’s free – really a 100% free task organizer for your cell phone! Access your Google Calendar, create To Do Lists, send text messages to a group, need to remind your kids about their family appointment ?

Create a reminder and assign it to your “family group”. Never miss an item while you are at the grocery store, an appointment, an errand by creating your shopping lists, to do lists, and appointments, and family calender to your cell phone by text.

You can also jott your items to twitter, your blog, and calender. Canadian or American mom’s welcomed by this great time management texting tool. So lets get Almost Organized mom Check it Out

Again as I work to get myself to get back on track after losing control for a few weeks I amazed at the power behind a simple daily schedule.

In reworking my Home Management binder I’ve had to come up with a new daily schedule. As my daughter grows things change. Much of my time with her is in creative ventures and teaching her how to do things. I can get very caught up in that.

But enough about that. What really happened is I got so engrossed with working with my soon to be preschooler that I kind of threw my schedule out the window. Some things were no longer done on certain days or done at all so as a result I dismissed my usual pattern of checking my daily schedule throughout the day or when I felt unproductive.

The result? Chaos.

Well okay not complete chaos but I could definitely tell a difference. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from but things were not as orderly as I liked them. Dinner was often late, the house wasn’t getting vacuum regularly, I felt like I had no time to do anything (but play with my daughter) and even my baby girl seemed a little out of sorts.

After a few weeks of this I thought maybe it was time for me to get serious about updating my Home Management binder. I reworked a new daily and weekly schedule to get me going and….

Voila!

The difference is like night and day. As I sit here mid-afternoon while my daughter takes her nap, and type yet another article (my third for the day) I have already washed 2 loads of laundry, straightened and vacuumed the house, straightened and inventoried the fridge and freezer in preparation for menu planning tomorrow. The kitchen is clean and tidy, in addition to the other rooms because I do walk through morning and night. I won’t get into all of the other things that are taken care of simply because my schedules reminded me that they needed to be done (so I did them) but I will tell you most of all I don’t feel frazzled.

I still have things to do. Work and home alike but I don’t feel out of control or overwrought because I know where they fall in my schedule.

Making a daily and weekly schedule is one of the most simple things you can do to start organizing yourself and your home. You see your list helps you to organize yourself because it’s a reminder in our all too busy lives of what needs to be done to keep things moving smoothly. And once you make your list USE it. Check it at least daily. It does no good unless you put it to use. If you can only muster one ounce of energy make it to check that list.

For complete organizing checklists for home and life visit Household Notes and for information on organizing your home visit Homemaking Organized.

If you use a blog or social network site this is a great little gadget … a To Do list. It says something about not having more then 7 To Do list items on their page:

“ToDo gadget lets you add up to 7 tasks, the average amount of concurrent tasks the human brain can handle effectively”

I believe that this gadget may have been designed by persons who have yet to discover parenthood :-)

If the sample is not working – head over to Hawaii Wahms to see how it looks.

Please be aware that I have not tested Lab Pixie, so you should be careful downloading anything from their site onto your computer. This Gadget allows you to insert the to do list on your blog or social networking site ….

Get your To Do List HERE

Finally a FREEware program to help keep your family health history not only organized but at your fingertips.When you Doctor or Emergency Room physician has a question, you will have the answers right there. Saving time and helping us advocate for better health care for our family. I have downloaded the program and installed in on my Treo 700, the site says it works fine in their virtual test, so hopefully I won’t be experiencing any problems with my Windows operating system but for those of you with a palm operating system, you should be fine.

I wasn’t able to find a Blackberry version but the closest thing I could located is located HERE.

Click here to check out

Splash Money allows you to keep track of your finances from your hand held…

• SplashMoney Desktop application with two-way sync – allows you to view, edit, and print transactions on your desktop computer
• Online banking — download transactions from your bank directly into SplashMoney on your desktop and handheld
• Budgets and Reports with Charts

Available in four different versions this software can be used by any PC user.

Windows Mobile Pocket PC | Windows Mobile Smartphone

| Palm Operating System | Desk Top only

Having the ability to easily view how much money is in the bank and what your credit card balance is allows you to easily view where your money is being spent and as a result can cut down on impulse purchases.

This software receives a great review from Organized Mom – However the ability to download your bank transactions is limited to US banks only.

Its mom’s gadget and the only time they get to touch it is when mom is supervising making it special and as such it keeps them occupied.  I only have the two standard comes with XP games and this evening I thought I would look at what other games I could find.

You mak be asking how games possible are a time saving tool. Here’s my theory based on two scenerios.

Scenerio One: (no palm) Mom and child at drig store. Mom can we go ?  Are you done yet ? I want to go home. Mom is rushed knowing their child is going to melt down and forgets to pick up the cold medicine resulting in another trip back after the children are done their homework.

Scenerio Two: (with palm) Child happily sits in buggy playing allowing mom to take her time and shop, remembering all the items listed on her palm which she double checks before letting her child play.

I was delighted to discover FLASH CARDS ! that will help my children learn spanish while I shop.

So here are my top three keep your children busy while you shop Palm applications:

Declan’s Spanish Language Flash Cards with audio

Connect Four

Match – Memory Game

*Please be sure to ALWAYS scan any file you down load from the internet for viruses BEFORE you extract them.

Special thank you to Method Shop.com 

[poll=4]

Last fall I signed up for a new cell phone and went with a Palm Treo Smart phone. Which leads me to my morning discovery ….  Splash ID. I have encountered some technical difficulties with Vista on my work computer and one of the problems is that I have to reload all my email accounts for work which in turn pointed out a glaring concern in my organization system. I have NO one place to store passwords. OK, so I do, a little page in the back of my dayplanner that I attempt to encrypt with my own secret code. OK, I am not five anymore and unlike my son who loves breaking codes, I can’t remember what codes I used when I created some of these passwords!

Of course I have also learned that we need STRONG passwords and really shouldn’t be using the same password for all of our accounts (which i have remedied) but now I really can’t recall half my passwords.

So this morning I downloaded the 30 day trial of Splash ID and will be upgrading to a paid version if this works.

If you aren’t a palm user this program also works with your blackberry and a variety of other hand helds as well.

Click here to download your 30 day trial and see if it works for you.

It’s a great goal for next week to all you busy moms …  create a system for storing all your memberships and passwords in one place.