All of the best apps to keep your busy family sane
With advancements in technology there are so many amazing apps and tools that I’ve found to help my busy family. These apps can help with organizing schedules, finances, files, recipes, the possibilities are endless.
With so many responsibilities piling up along side the mountains of laundry, it’s important to have tools that can help you maintain your sanity while you take care of those you love.
Below are a few of my favorite apps and tools that keep me sane and organized, despite my super busy schedule and daughter’s never ending request for snacks.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra, and you’ll keep me supplied in caffeine. It’s a win for everyone, really. Please read my disclaimer for more information.
Paprika is my all time favorite app, the one I’m always raving about online to anyone who will listen. Paprika is the ultimate meal planning tool.
This is how I used to meal plan before I started using Paprika: I’d sit down, spend several hours scouring Pinterest for new recipes to try, jot down their ingredients and make a menu for the next two weeks. Then, I’d usually somehow forget to make something, be missing a main ingredient, or forget why I ever bought a specific ingredient.
Paprika makes things SO much easier. So now, this is what my meal planning looks like with Paprika: When I see a recipe I like online or on Pinterest, I automatically add it to Paprika with a their handy browser extension. If I’m on my phone I just save it to Pinterest in and then use the browser extension to add it to Paprika once I’m on my laptop.
Paprika saves the actual steps of the recipe and the ingredients on two seperate screens. And get this, that’s ALL that they save. Not the 10 pages of someone telling you how their grandmother made the recipe every summer and all of their fond memories. Nope. It strips all of the fluff out so that you are left with only the recipe itself and the ingredients.
Once it’s in Paprika, I sit down every few weeks and create a menu within their calendar. I add the meals I’ve already saved to the app to the calendar, you can add as many as you want (breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, etc). Now here’s my favorite part, when I get done putting together the menu, I simply import the ingredients to the built in grocery list. So that ALLLLLL of the ingredients I need for each meal is there, seperated by grocery section. It’s amazing. You can also add things to your “pantry” within the app, so it skips adding those ingredients to your grocery list, such as salt, pepper, etc.
The app is $4.99 (one-time) and so worth the price.
You’ve likely heard of Cozi as many parents swear by it. I really love Cozi, specifically for the shared calendar options. One of the best features is the ability to color code appointments and events within the app, so my daughters gymnastics class shows up as purple, while doctors appointments show up as blue. It keeps us all on track, especially with our busy work schedules.
You all know that I love making to-do lists. There is something insanely satisfying about checking items off. But as on-the-go as I am, it’s tough keeping up with paper lists. That’s where Todoist comes in. With Todoist, you ca create seperate lists (called Boards) to keep things such as work and home seperate. You can also set recurring due dates and reminders, even delegate a task to others. It’s extremely handy and simple to use, while still giving me that rush from checking off tasks without the paper trail.
I can’t say enough about TrueBill. TrueBill is an app that allows you to connect to multiple bank accounts. TrueBill then reviews your spending as well as recurring payments and subscriptions. When I initially signed up for TrueBill I didn’t have high expectations. Afterall, I pride myself in staying ontop of my finances, what could this app possibly offer me?
Well, let me tell you. During quarantine I, like many parents, signed up for a ton of free trials and educational based subscriptions to try and get through lockdown and schooling at home. Most of the subscriptions were to be charged once a year on a recurring basis, and I’d totally forgotten about the majority of them.
TrueBill notified me of these subscriptions BEFORE the were renewed, so I had the chance to cancel the ones we were no longer using. I estimate I’ve saved at least $200-$300 with this app.
Now that my subscriptions are in check, TrueBill notifies me of any new subscriptions, if my bills increase, and even categorizes my spending. Not bad for a free app.
Imagine this, you’re blog hopping and come across some organizing tips that you love. You can save them to Pinterest, but what if you don’t really want the whole article? What if you only one a small piece of it? With the Evernote extension, you can essentially take a snippet of any website and save it within your evernote account. And snippets aren’t the only things you can save, you can add whole pages, images, and PDF files. Once they’re saved, you can even search for text inside of the images you saved. Pretty cool huh?
Evernote is one of those tools you really have to try out to realize how nifty it really is. And the best part, it’s free.
I’d love to hear your favorite productivity apps. Join us over at the private Facebook group.