How often do you go into someone's kitchen and there's a pile of paperwork on the side - often letters from the children's school(s) highlighting important dates and meetings?
As soon as one of the kids mentions needing money for a school trip, the whole pile has to be gone through to find out when it is and how much is needed!
So Organised Mum has designed the Family Weekly Planner - a calendar which begins 1 September 2008 and runs to the end of December 2009. Presumably they will be producing the next one to begin 1 Spetember 2009 so the last three months on this calendar seem superfluous.
What is useful is the plastic overlay which allows you to write down regular weekly activities once without having to repeat it on every weekly page. There's a pen fixed to the calendar and the overlay wipes clean. There's a handy pocket at the back to store important papers.
There are six columns so everyone in the family should have his or her own section - and all members can see at a glance what everyone else should be doing from appointments to completeing your Tax Return.
None of this is particularly original - I've seen people produce their own versions of these on computers, just as I used to, and there are other versions on the market. But if you haven't got the time or inclination to design your own, the Family Weekly Planner could be for you. It comes with a set of rather twee stickers for everything from birthday to activity, beautician(!) to optician. Maybe these stickers are more useful in helping children see what's planned and they may enjoy sticking them on.
Whether the Family Weekly Planner helps you get more organised is a moot point - the challenge is to have the discipline to write appointments etc on the calendar as soon as you know them. But perhaps having the calendar hanging prominently in the kitchen will inspire you to fill it in!
The Family Weekly Planner £9.99 and the similar Home Planner £9.99 are available from www.organised-mum.co.uk (free p+p)