Keeping Organized with Google Calendar

I’m a big fan of Google and their Calendar application. It might not be the prettiest calendar out there, but it’s pretty reliable and keeps my schedule in order and syncs to my Android phone instantly and wirelessly. Mariko always complains that I can’t remember things like appointments and stuff so now I try to put upcoming events into my calendar right away to avoid the “but I already told you that” moments. What’s really cool is that you can create different calendars for different types of events. Here’s a list of stuff that I use Google Calendar for:

• Kids’ School Events: We get lots of email from the kids’ school and they’ll have reminder dates scattered all around. I’ll make an event for each one as I come across it and put it in the “Kids” calendar. Stuff like Picture Day, Field Trips, Project Due Dates, etc.
• Travel Itinerary: I keep my flight info as an event that spans the entire vacation, but then I also add events for each day if needed. Since Mariko usually plans out our schedule I can keep track of it here. I can also save URLs to places we’ll be visiting.
• Recurring Events: The kids’ afterschool schedule changes every few months, and each time it does I have to shift my thinking. “Was this session’s Tumbling class on Wednesdays or Thursdays for Koa?” Here’s where I set up the weekly recurring events so I can quickly glance to see if I am supposed to drop someone off at dance or tumbling.
• Dodgers Schedule: This one is a public calendar that I found on Google’s site. I subscribed to it and now I can see when and where my team will be playing. There are a lot of public calendars that you can subscribe to, such as various countries’ holidays, star dates, and Sunrise/Sunsets. I’ve also subscribed to my local library’s calendar to keep up to dates with events and activities going on there.
• Recurring Reminders: This calendar has things like “Change Aquarium Filter”, “Backup Data”, and “Pay Utilities”. I also have a reminder for “Recycling Day” since I can never remember which week it was.
• Journal: I use a calendar named “Journal” to keep a record of important things that happened that I might need to reference later. For instance, documenting each correspondence I have with my mobile-phone carrier to get an issue resolved, or jotting down when I paid the Property Taxes. Later if I need to reference it, I just search the calendar for “Tax” or “Phone” and the dates all come up. I also make a note here for when we do any car or house maintenance (replaced air filters).
• Gardening: This calendar is where I put in events like when I planted a certain veggie or when I should do certain yard maintenance. Helps me keep from over-fertilizing, or remembering what was planted where the previous year.
• Library Book Due Dates: My local library has a cool checkout system. You can either get a printout of your receipt or have the receipt info sent to your email. I have it sent to my gmail, and from the gmail message I can select Create event from the More actions menu. This will prepopulate an event on the due date (how does it figure that out?) and the body of the email as the description. I just set an email notification for two days before the due date, and I am all set.
• Shared Calendars: You can share your own calendars if you’d like. I’ve shared my personal calendar with my brother, and he with me so now I can get a little window into his daily life. Pretty fun.

What is also cool about having multiple calendars is that you can toggle them on or off, and color-code them. This works for both the web version and mobile. And if you have an Android phone, you can put the calendar on your desktop in a widget like Google’s standard widget, or something more customizable like CalWidget. Makes keeping up-to-date super easy!