PSA - organizing your home, and your husband

ErikaLynn75 · February 2014

If you're like me, you have a million To-Do Lists for getting ready for this baby. And if your husband is like my husband, he nods and smiles while you talk to him about it, and then emails you from work the next day to ask you about all the things you already told him. Since my husband and I both spend a good portion of our days sitting in front of a computer, I found a program that I think is really going to help us. It's trello.com.

It's basically just a bunch of lists you can make, but then each item in each list is a "card" where you can attach documents, links, write comments, or tons of other things. And you can assign tasks to specific people, and see who is working on what. For instance, I made a "Board" for choosing a daycare. Then each center we've toured or planned to tour got its own card, and on each card I linked their website and attached any digital info each center had emailed me. Then there's a place for us to comment on each one if we wanted to discuss pros/cons. Then I made another Board called Appointments, and made a card for each doctor's appointment, childbirth class, and hospital tour. Then on each card I can put date/time and any info (like what we're supposed to bring with us) so DH can remember, and we can put questions we want to ask at each appt as we think of them.

It would be incredibly helpful in a work setting if you have a group project to complete. We just learned about it at our inservice today (I'm a teacher). But my first thought was that it would be a great way for my husband and I to keep track of all our baby-related projects. My dry erase calendar on the fridge where I make all my lists just isn't cutting it for us anymore.

There are videos on YouTube if you want to see all that it can do.

I hope this doesn't sound like spam. I swear I don't work for this company, I'm just excited to start using it!

TaylorHam86 · February 2014

Sounds VERY helpful! Esp for the doctor appointments, DH a always needs to be reminded a million times. Now if I can just convince him to use it... Thanks for sharing!

ErikaLynn75 · February 2014

It would be nice if DH and I could just share a digital calendar, but his company uses Google everything, and I use Outlook's calendar. And actually most google things (maps, calendars, gmail) don't even work when I'm online at school. So this is the next best thing. And there's an app for the phone too, so if he gets that, he'll get an alert whenever I add something.

And I can assign things to him too. Like I made a card in one of the to-do lists that said "Review life insurance policy" and delegated it to him, then he can comment on it if he wants, and mark it when he's done with it. He does most things like this during his down-time at work when we're not together to talk about it, so I think this is going to work out well for him.

delatl · February 2014

I know and like Trello, although it never occurred to me to use it for home projects--great idea! I work with college students and often teach them about it for organizing their research papers and projects. I just may introduce my DH to it this weekend and see what he thinks. I'm definitely the organizer in my household, and am always looking for ways to bring him on board so I don't start feeling like I'm doing everything.

My PSA is that the one organizing tool I can't live without is Evernote. It's amazing! I use it for both work and personal organizing. It is an app that lives on your desktop or mobile device, and syncs in between them. I store all my recipes there, all my baby checklists, all my meeting notes, everything. You can tag the notes or put them in folders, email them to people, etc. You can also drag and drop PDFs into Evernote and it stores them in such a way that they are searchable later.

My DH and I use a shared Google calendar for our social stuff and dr.s appts, and basically anything we need to remember together. It's worked really well for us. But just to be anal about it, I also have a whiteboard calendar that I also put all those things on hanging right by the door. That way, he sees it twice and can't complain that he wasn't told.