my new favorite app!

You know I love organization. I love calendars and processes and sticky notes. I love anything that makes my house look good and run smoothly. I recently had a new friend tell me that she only surface cleans. Now I was standing in her beautifully decorated home at the time. Looking around, I saw nothing, nothing, out of place. Apparently, though, I would have been in total shock had I dared to open a cupboard or peek behind a closet door. I knew right then that we would be good friends, because I do the exact same thing. I keep my living spaces tidy and the behind the scenes spaces I actually use every day organized. The rest o the house has to fend for itself. This means that my kitchen drawers are beautiful and my walk in closet in the bedroom open and bright. The closet in the office, however, is totally overflowing with travel backpacks, books, old computer parts... When we move out of the house on day I will be throwing away a lot of stuff we don't need and have simply hidden away behind a closed door or in the basement.

Keeping up with the day to day work of maintaining the home I want for myself and my family has not been easy. Breaking down the chores into daily lists has helped. I'd like to say that posting each list in the room to be cleaned so that my husband can check it out and do some of the cleaning has not really helped. I still find myself making a daily list on a sticky note and tacking it up on the kitchen cupboard for him. Sometimes, sometimes, that works. It's a work in progress...

Keeping my family control journal handy was not always so simple. If I left it out on the counter it wound up with mail or school papers stacked on top. If I put in up in the cupboard I forget it was there. I even tried to combine it with my calendar, but that didn't work either. But then I found this:

This is a little app for the iPhone called HomeRoutines. At under $4.00 it is a true bargain. I have been using it for about a month now and I love it. It is customizable, so I made it my own. I added my Morning and Evening routines and then changed the Focus section to "Today's Focus", since I clean 1 zone/area a day, not a week. This app even lets me add a reminder for each day, right at the top under the date. I didn't want to be changing these reminders every week so I chose reminders that are more global, such as What can I do for Brad today? and Drink water!.

This app comes with a companion website that can sync with your phone, making it very easy to do the original set up and make any changes. But my favorite part of the app? That little smiley face under "Accomplishments". As I check off tasks or to do items I can see how much I have accomplished- and I love that! Using this app, in conjunction with the Cozi calendar/family app is all I need. From Cozi I can send reminder texts to my husband about shopping lists, tasks, or our schedule,  which is helping me to force  allow my husband to help out a little more.

I'm an organizing geek, I know. And I love my technology, always have. So now I can combine the two, and I am in geek techno heaven!