The Kickstarter - Day 12

We survived the weekend and the halfway point of the Kickstarter campaign for Dad's Family Organizing, Event Scheduling, and Household Planning Calendar. In and of itself, surviving the weekend is no small feat, particularly this time of the year. First of all, we are looking down the barrel of two long weeks without regular events or school. Second, we voluntarily extended that vacation by pulling everyone out for a sick day on Friday. Ewok flu, it was.

So, a three day weekend is nothing to sniff at. But it means we are going into the week with birthday parties, Christmas events, and obligations to attend. We have to fit preparations for these into an already packed weekend.

Preparations make you must. Weekend you shall have not.
Also, be never tired of Star Wars references will we become.

In struggling to put together a calendar, I had to come to the realization that I'm pretty good at looking ahead to events. But I'm not that good at backfilling some of the steps to get ready for those events.

Birthday presents are a big one. They don't enter my normal routine of shopping, particularly not two or three weeks before the party. My mother and my aunts seem to have a deep well of stored gifts, ready to be distributed at a moment's notice.  I don't shop like that, speculative gift purchasing. And even if I did, we don't have a place to keep that stuff in the house.

It's not just variation in what gets purchased, but when. I got a little insight to this when I was planning a birthday party for our girls. Rooms scheduled, food secured, entertainment was set. About a week before, I sent out one last email with the directions to parking and a note that said "and don't worry about gifts."

Folks showed up with gifts. When asked why, it was suggested that I gave very little notice on the No Gifts thing. They had done the shopping quite a bit earlier. Oh.

So, tons of calendar and family organizers have these sticker sets that say "birthday parties" and "soccer practice". I've upped the ante.

From the actual sticker sheets.
I see your "Trombone Practice" and raise you "Not Forgetting to Pay for Trombone Practice."

These stickers come with notes on adding important things to the calendar for earlier and later dates. The biggest assistance is when one of these get placed and moving backwards or forwards crosses over a change in month. There's nothing worse than flipping a calendar page at the end of the month and discovering you have Cousin Bert's birthday tomorrow. Those month breaks can really mess with party preparations. And now they don't have to.

Hopefully folks find this to be a useful addition to the calendar. It's really the belief that organizers should be an extension of the way you work AND help improve the way you work whenever possible.