Creating a weekly family schedule

My husband and I both work full-time and we have two elementary-age kids. This means that our life can get pretty busy sometimes, what with everyone's activities, obligations, doctor appointments, etc.

Several months ago, my husband wished for a way to organize our chaotic schedules, to have a big-picture idea of what was coming instead of just being unpleasantly surprised by his phone alerting him that David has a basketball game across town in 15 minutes. Synced smart-phone calendars help, but they don't do a very good job of giving all four of us a picture of what our week will look like.

In the past, we'd also had laminated chore charts on the fridge so we could check off everyday chores. He wanted to bring those back, too, so I took it up as a design challenge to save fridge space and combine the two: weekly calendar and daily chore chart. After all, I'm a graphic designer turned UX specialist. This sort of thing ought to be right in my wheelhouse!

After several iterations, here is what I came up with. This is an example of a weekly schedule from a few months ago.

Here are some of the notable features of this design:

• Only 4 activities fit on each day, a reminder that it's just not realistic to try and do too much in one day.
• The schedule begins on Monday, because that's how we think of our weeks: five days of school/work followed by two days of weekend. Also, some events go across the whole weekend and having Saturday and Sunday next to each other makes it easier to show that.
• The chores can be changed each week when I print out the new schedule. For example, this week I added making & delivering a cake to the chores. 
• Originally, I had initials next to each chore showing who was supposed to do what. I ended up getting rid of those because everyone already knows which chores are theirs.
• We can use this schedule to plan meals for the week, seeing ahead of time which days we'll have a lot of time for cooking and which days will be 'Leftovers a la Microwave.' If I were a terribly organized sort of person, I might even add the menu to the schedule (but I'm not, so I won't).
• Even the youngest member of the family can easily see which days are busy and which are not, especially useful if you want to know when you can invite a friend to come over.

I'm still working on the design of the weekly schedule, refining features based on user feedback. For example, I'm experimenting with the best way to display multi-day events like the camping trip shown here (especially tricky since this has to work in print, not just on the screen).

I'd love to hear any feedback you have on this design, especially any ideas for improving it!

Poem: Interrupted

Interrupted by
phone calls
Interrupted by
text messages
Interrupted by
instant message
washing machine chime
calendar reminder
"Are you sure you want to delete this?"
dog barking
doorbell
oven timer
crashing breaking noise
"Mommy!"
Now, what was I doing again?

When Taking Is Giving

"What can I give you for your birthday?"
"Oh, nothing, please! I already have everything I need."

It's a conversation I've participated in many times, both asking and answering. We want to give gifts to our friends and family to show that we love them. But the longer you live, the more material stuff accumulates and the less you find you actually need. So it becomes more and more difficult both to give and receive gifts that are truly welcome and appreciated.

My house is filled with decades' worth of accumulated junk. Some is sentimental, some valuable,  some useful, and quite a bit is none of the above. I'm guessing I'm not the only person I know in this predicament. Things get put away when they're no longer needed - baby clothes in the attic, vases in the back of a closet - and the "out of sight, out of mind" phenomenon kicks in. Eventually the unneeded stuff starts taking up so much space that the things I do need and want spill out into the living area, turning it into a storage area.

Simplicity is serenity. I want to get rid of the things I don't need, but I become overwhelmed trying to sort through it all. I make periodic trips to Goodwill. I shred, trash, recycle and consign, but still it seems that there's always more stuff lurking in the corners of my home.

And so I imagine a party that's like the opposite of a birthday party. An un-birthday party, if you will. The guests don't bring presents for me. Instead, I give things to them. I picture them roaming my house, like the guys on American Pickers, finding treasures in my closets and attic.

"What a nice purse!"
"Like it? It's yours!"
"I've been looking for a lemon juicer like this."
"Well now you've found one. Take it!"
"That baby puzzle has the pieces ours is missing!"
"Great! Now you've got a whole one."

I wrap all the gifts in festive paper and bags and put bows on top, then hand them back for guests to take home. I tell my friends that no thank-you note is necessary, because they have just given me the best gifts imaginable: space, time, and peace of mind.

"What can I take from you for your birthday?"

10 Lazy Ways to Burn Calories

photo by Maria de las Mercedes

The weather's warmed up, the swimming lake opens this weekend, and our family trip to the beach is coming up next month. That means that bathing suits are in our immediate future, and that means that it's diet time.

I'm already counting calories and steps, but I'm looking for every advantage. Since I'm already pretty busy, I searched for some really, really simple ways to burn calories.

Out of all the tips I found, here are the ones I think are the easiest to do.

These first two come from a list on WebMD

1. Drink water
2. Fidget

An article from Allure magazine recommends

3. Take Vitamin D
4. Laugh
5. Don't eat right before bedtime
6. Relax, de-stress
7. Watch less TV
8. Eat spicy food

And FitDay suggests

9. Chew gum
10. Go shopping

I think I can manage those things. Bathing suit, here I come!

Finding Sacred Space in a Secular Schedule

Today, for the first time in years, I didn't go to church on Ash Wednesday. It's not that I didn't want to go; I did. I meant to go, I planned to go. But my day just didn't go according to plan.

I usually attend the noon service (11:00 at my church, but close enough) on my lunch break. That was my original plan for today. Then, I found out yesterday that I had to be at a meeting at work all day today. That meant 11:00 was out. I couldn't do 7:00am because D-Mac, my first-grader, doesn't get picked up by his carpool until just past seven. 8:30 was no good because I had a doctor's appointment then, and I'd already rescheduled it once. I would have to go to the 7:00pm service.

I dashed out of the all-day meeting a few minutes early to pick up the boys from daycare so I could take  four-year-old Ducky to karate. I tried to call my husband at work to ask him if he could pick up D-Mac after his 6:45 karate lesson, but couldn't get ahold of him. That was when I first began to feel a sense of impending doom. Usually, he makes dinner on Wednesdays so we can all eat during the time between karate lessons, but today he got stuck working late.

So I arrived home to an empty house with two hungry boys, no dinner plans, and only half an hour before we had to leave again. I probably should have punted at that point and heated up some corn dogs, but I was feeling contrary so I decided to actually try and cook dinner myself. This turned out not to be such a good idea. I barely finished a quick chicken stir-fry before we had to dash out the door. There wasn't time to actually eat what I'd cooked. Fortunately, my husband was home by then and had the forethought to heat up a corn dog for D-Mac to eat in the car. I was wearing my velour sweatsuit and didn't have time to change for the church service, so I took ten seconds to grab a pair of respectable pants, some black boots, and a nice sweater out of my closet.

We arrived at the karate studio only a couple minutes late for D-Mac's class. I changed into my church clothes in the studio's tiny bathroom and hustled back to the car. I looked at the clock at that point and saw that I had less than ten minutes before the last Ash Wednesday service of the day began. I thought about driving downtown as fast as I could, finding a parking place, and maybe managing to get into the church before the sermon. I thought about getting home after 8:00 with the boys' Valentines for school still not addressed and staying up long past their bedtime to get them finished.

Completely defeated by the demands of the day, I drove home and changed back into my sweats. I helped Ducky put together his Valentines. I washed some dishes. I picked up D-Mac from karate, then helped him address his Valentines and finish his homework. I put the boys to bed and started a load of laundry.

One thing I love about the church calendar is how it makes time for everything important throughout the year. There are times for celebration, times for repentance, times for remembering the past, and times for looking to the future. But I live in the secular world, which runs on its own calendar. Maybe if I lived in a monastery my life would revolve around the daily offices and the seasons of the church. But I have a full-time job and two kids and all the responsibilities those imply.

The world is going to keep on chugging along as it always has. It's not going to pause for me, or for anyone else. If I need some sacred space in my daily schedule, I might have to just find it where and when I can. As much as I love following the church calendar, I need to remember that it's only a guide, a way to remember to fit everything important in during the course of the year. If I can't make it to a church service on Ash Wednesday, I can still carve out time to pray and meditate when the demands of my life have quieted.

It's late now. Everyone else has gone to bed. Finally, I can make some time to observe this holiday, to mark the boundary between a time of celebration and a time of reflection. Tomorrow will come regardless, with its demands on my time. But by reserving a small sacred space in my day, I can follow two calendars, the sacred and the secular, and live in both worlds simultaneously.