How to Layer Family, Work, and Home Upkeep in One Calendar for an Organized Year

This is a sponsored guest post from Evelyn Long of Renovated Magazine. Interested in having your post appear on Imagine it Done's blog? Apply here.

You will likely wear many hats throughout your life. You could be a loving parent to your family, a skilled employee to your company or a DIY mechanic for your home. Having an organized calendar for the year can help ensure that you dedicate the right time to each aspect of your life and maintain your peace of mind along the way.

Juggling Family, Work and Home Upkeep in One Year

While wearing many hats may sound fun, it can also involve numerous responsibilities. Adults with children under six years old allocate an average of 2.5 hours a day providing primary child care, while those under 13 spend around 5.2 hours a day offering secondary child care. If they’re full-time employed, they would likely have to work an average of 8.1 hours a day.

Home upkeep can vary depending on the day, but 80% of people who engage in it spend around two hours a day doing the housework, cooking, lawn care and more. It’s easy for schedules to get hectic day to day, and it can leave you feeling overwhelmed or tired from all the obligations.

Thankfully, creating a centralized system in your calendar through thoughtful yearly calendar planning can help you manage your energy and time blocks. That way, you can meet all expectations and do what you need to do with ease.

Managing a calendar is certainly a work in progress for many people. Here are some tips that can help you get started.

Tips for Creating and Layering a Calendar

1. Explore Different Calendar Formats

Figure out which kind of calendar format works best for you. A monthly template is often the most common, since it gives them a bird’s eye view of what’s happening. You can write down a month’s worth of appointments and events in advance on a pre-printed calendar.

Some may prefer scaling back to a weekly approach to avoid being overwhelmed. Others might want to have a yearly look at everything to see everything in advance. It’s usually a matter of personal preference.

2. Take a Mental Note of the Milestones

Try to note down the milestones that will happen in a calendar year. Birthdays, graduations and more are key events that you want to be present for with your family. Plus, celebrating these milestones helps kids recognize emotional growth and personal achievements.

Apply the same logic to your work events, like a monthly meeting within your office or a yearly conference everyone attends. Writing it down in advance lets future you know what to prepare for.

3. Write Down the Most Important Chores

In terms of home upkeep, you want to divide and highlight the tasks into daily, weekly and monthly tasks. Certain tasks, like making the bed every day or vacuuming consistently on weekends, prevent clutter and grime from building up. Monthly activities can involve deep cleans for the bathroom and kitchen.

Include seasonal and annual maintenance chores too. For instance, summer is the time to wash the house’s exterior so it can dry in the sun. Tasks like this can improve your home’s ROI and overall make your home more inviting. During the winter, you want to caulk the gaps around vulnerable areas like the windows, cornices and walls. Small cracks can let cold air into your space and revert your insulation attempts in the past.

4. Take Advantage of the “Other Calendars” Feature

With a physical calendar, layering on the family, work and home upkeep tasks is as easy as writing them in separate bullet points. If you’re using a digital calendar like those on Google Calendar, take advantage of the “Other Calendars” feature, where you can create your very own new calendar.

You can make one dedicated to family, one for work and one for home upkeep. As long as you keep their boxes checked, it should all show up on your centralized calendar without a worry.

5. Utilize Tabs and Color Coding

Physical tabs and tags can make calendars easier to navigate. There are many generic stickers with labels like “to-do” or “notes” that you can adhere to certain types of tasks. Some people use emojis and icons as a digital tagging system for their own calendar.

Color-code tasks by category for quick identification. You can assign certain hues for family, work and home upkeep to know what certain days are most dedicated to. It’s easy to set this up for virtual calendars, but you can also use markers or highlighters with paper ones.

7. Set Reminders and Calendar Reviews

Paying attention to the calendar is a learned skill, and setting up your reminders can be an excellent tool to stay on top of what you need to do. That said, a study on smartphone reminders found that using these may encourage overreliance on these features in the long run.

To combat that, set up at least biweekly calendar reviews to take the initiative to know what to occur. It’s also a good time to double-check certain events and to purge any cancellations.

Utilize a Yearly Calendar Planning System For All Your Hats

Combining all your events and duties into a single calendar to get a clearer view of the big picture. You will undoubtedly feel much more organized with it by your side, and you can focus more on the things that matter most.

Evelyn Long is a recognized expert in organization and decluttering, dedicated to helping individuals create clutter-free homes and minds. She contributes her insights to publications such as the National Association of Realtors and Tidied by K, while also serving as the Editor-in-Chief of Renovated Magazine. Through her work, Evelyn inspires readers to embrace simplicity and efficiency in their everyday lives.