The school year is drawing near and for many mothers that also means the start of keeping an entire family organized.Sure you can use an iPhone to digitally organize your life (heck, there's probably an app for that), but for the rest of us, a day planner or calendar remains the go-to method.
There's another option, however.
Say hello to momAgenda, a company that offers a collection of organizational tools and stationary to help moms find order in the sometimes frenetic pace of parenthood.
One of the most popular products in the line is the momAgenda Desktop, a planner that offers a 17-month calendar (the calendar for the 2009-2010 version begins in August and runs through December 2010) in week-at-a-glance format.
The company sent The Bee one a momAgenda Desktop planner, along with a separate chore list and babysitter notes tablet.
We passed it to Leigh Anne Burford-Petersen, 41, a work-at-home mother of three boys, ages 2, 6 and 8, who also homeschools her sons.
Burford-Petersen, of Placer County, said the planner has many good features, and for some moms could provide "a stylish, fun way to keep a busy life organized," but she likely will stay with her current planner.
"The one drawback of the momAgenda planner is that it does not permit me to tailor the planner to my needs," Burford-Petersen wrote in her e-mailed review. "For example, I need less party planning and more meal planning."
Here are other highlights from Burford-Petersen's review:
- The look - Burford-Petersen was immediately struck by the planner's aesthetic quality. "Rather than my dour, utilitarian black planner, the momAgenda planner comes in a cheerful shade of light green," she said.
- The layout - The planner is well-organized for the most part. The calendar begins with a month-at-a-glance section, followed by a week-at-a-glance section. Burford-Petersen really liked the layout of the latter. The top half of every two pages provides a typical week layout. The bottom half of those pages, however, is a grid of boxes for recording what up to four children are doing each day of the week. A blank is provided to plan dinner for each night of the week. "I need to plan three meals a day for a week and create a grocery list, so that last feature is lacking," she said.
- The extra features - The planner devotes one page each to books, movies, music, fashion, restaurants, wines, health and fitness, two pages each to gift records and entertaining resources, six pages to parties and eight pages to vacation planning. "Truthfully, this section of the planner confuses me ... six pages for parties and eight pages for vacation planning could only be useful to me in my wildest fantasies. At the same time, one page each to record my nutrition and exercise plans is rather useless," Burford-Petersen said.
- The momEssentials pamphlet - The detachable address book at the back is well-designed for mothers. It can be moved to the next year's edition of the planner, making transfer of the information very easy... "It keeps the information a mother may need in a hurry at her fingertips."
- The chore list - "I think I like the chore list, in part, because I would like to think that my children would be this dutiful and somehow the very organized chart gives me hope," she said. Furford-Petersen also added that as a homeschooling mother, she could also use the chore chart to help the children record their weekly progress through their subjects.
- The babysitter notes - The pre-printed form ensures that a busy parent does not forget to give pertinent information to the sitter.
Nina Restieri, who was using a doctor's scheduling pad to keep track of her family's activities before founding momAgenda, said the company's products are better than other day planners because they are centered around a mothers' organizational needs."The biggest difference is that we offer everything in one place, providing moms with the piece of mind that all aspects of their personal puzzle - family, career, home and social life - come together," she wrote in an e-mail.
The collection of momAgenda planners and tools are available online and in retail stores.
