In today’s world where everyone is busy, it is no surprise that modern parents find it challenging to cope with family and work. It certainly is not easy to remember everything about every family member’s schedule and their needs amidst your busy schedule. Even if you are a super mom or super dad, you may sometimes forget things, after all, we are not supercomputers. Don’t worry, a family organizer app can help you out with remembering all the important things and keep your family organized.
When are your kid’s vaccinations due? When is the doctor’s appointment for your elderly parents? What time do you have to pick up your son after soccer class or your daughter after her piano lessons? Best friend’s marriage? Plans for your next family vacation, grocery shopping list, and the list goes on. Sticky notes on the kitchen wall and keeping everything on your head can become messy. Well, thanks to smartphones and mobile app technologies today, there are a number of family organizer apps available to make your family life a lot easier. Move on with technology advancements and it’s time to replace sticky notes with these family organizer apps.
These organizer apps can be quite handy in organizing family affairs. Schedule everything and plan everything in one spot enabling you to take care of your family smoothly. In fact, they turn out to be must-haves for busy moms and busy dads to simplify their family life.
Common Features of a Family Organizer App
It can facilitate organizing and planning your family activities like planning your purchases and scheduling family needs like the date and time of your kid’s school meetings, a family party, etc. With a family schedule app, you can create your to-do and shopping lists or keep your favorite recipes at hand and sneak peek whenever needed. You can share events and plans with other family members and always stay connected through these apps. There are apps that even allow you to distribute household chores to family members.
What makes the best family organizer app?
If you go to the App Store or Google Play Store, you can see many family and life organizer apps. So, which one should you choose? The more choice you have, the more difficult it is to make that choice. If you are looking for the best apps to organize your family, they should be easy to use and have features that can really improve your family organizing efficiency and simplify your day-to-day activities.
Here is a list of features for such apps and we believe at least four of these features must be present in any app for it to become one of the best family organizer apps.
- Calendar – Let you plan your family events in a shared family calendar.
- To-Do lists – Create to-dos as well as assign and share the lists with the family members.
- Events – Keep track of birthdays and anniversaries of family members.
- Real-time Locator – For location sharing and custom places.
- Files – To Store all information from medical to household details.
- Photos – Upload and share your family moments.
- Meals – Schedule your meals with your saved recipes.
How to find a good family organizer app?
A good family organizer app is one that has features to help solve your stress points and can make your life easier. That being said, each family’s needs would be different and there can be no single perfect app for all families. So, in order to find the best organizer app that suits your needs, the first step is to figure out exactly what are the stress points in your family’s daily life- is it tracking the chores, planning events, or tracking the due dates for payments, whatever be it. Once your trouble spots have been identified, look for an app that can help you get around those efficiently.
Can Kids Use Family Apps?
Of course, you need not wait until they are 18 to get them involved in using these apps. You can introduce these apps to them as productivity tools from an early age. Most kids today are familiar with using tablets and smartphones from a very early age and can get along with these kinds of apps easily. Kids who are able to read can very well add to-do lists, check for tasks, use the family calendars, etc., and thus begin to start productivity apps to manage their life and time better.
Here are some of the best family organizer alias life organizer apps for busy parents looking to manage family and kids more effectively :
1. Cozi :
Cozi is a family schedule organizer app. It allows users to coordinate the schedules of every family member in one place and thus keep the whole family in the loop.
With this app, you can keep track of each member’s appointment, or tasks as well as share your to-do lists or even menu plans that you can edit or coordinate so that nobody in the family misses any information. The app has a color-coding feature that can assign a color to each family member so that tracking is easier.
Cozi is a free app available for Android and iOS.
2. TimeTree :
TimeTree is a schedule organizer that allows you to share all your plans with your family members and plan and coordinate family events together as a family by creating schedules on a single collaborative calendar. The app is suitable for families where all members of our family are busy and never get a chance for the whole family to have sit-down meetings to plan things.
The app has a chat that enables each family member to give suggestions on plans- be it a family vacation plan or the dinner menu. The app also allows family members to share pictures of an event or memorable family moments, making it a wonderful experience for everyone.
TimeTree is free to download for Android/iOS
3. Flayk: Made for Your Family:
Flayk is an excellent app to organize your family life. It offers various features like a calendar, event organizer, to-do list sharing, and more with an easy-to-use interface.
Of course, there are many life organizer apps with these features. However, Flayk has some additional features that make it stand out from its competitors. One such feature is setting up multiple families enabling you to organize extended families or your football team or even a group of friends using the app.
Flayk also offers a nifty reward system that allows you to give incentives for chores and tasks done by family members through the app. You can customize the rewards the way you want, say your kids can earn points for the chores they do and redeem them for any rewards whenever they want. You can track the status of the activities from the app as well.
Flayk is a free app available for download at http://www.flayk.com/.
4. OurHome :
OurHome is a family life organizer app that lets you manage family task assignments and organize the day-to-day activities of family members. This app uses a gamified approach to motivate kids to complete their tasks without feeling overwhelmed.
The app’s schedule organizer can be used to schedule tasks and assign them to family members, track their progress and status, or even send reminders and give penalties if they are left unattended. It has a goal-setting feature so that family members know the goals they have to achieve.
The app has a calendar that provides information to all family members on appointments and schedules of other members of the family as well as important dates and events. This ensures everyone in the family is updated about the family activities without any gaps.
It is free to use. available for Android and iOS.
5. Family Matters :
FamilyMatters is a full feature-packed family app. It has all the features you would need for organizing your family- Shopping lists, to-do lists, real-time location sharing, family chats, and whatnot. The calendar organizer lets you add important family dates and make family joint plans for family events.
Another interesting feature in the app is the Personal Wishes feature which allows you to add your desires to the special list, which other members of the family can see. And anyone in the family can check out the wishes of other family members and help them to realize their wishes.
Available for Android.
6. FamilyWall :
FamilyWall is a very popular app for family/life organizations that lets you stay connected with the family always as well as organized. It allows you to schedule your events, To-do lists, locate family members with real-time location and get safe zone alerts when your kids reach school or home, share photos and videos, send private and group messages, and much more.
FamilyWall has a basic version that assures all the required privacy and security and is Ad-Free as well. To benefit from more advanced and exclusive features like real-time location and safe zone alerts, you would have to opt for their Premium plan.
Available for Android.
7. Picniic :
Picniic is yet another smart family/life organizer app that is free and provides a little bit of all features you would need to have for a good organizer app. You have a family calendar to share your schedules, events, etc, to-do and shopping lists, store your recipes and create meal plans, create group events, and more.
Picniic offers its users a unique grid layout that uses color-coded boxes for every section. This gives users an attractive easy-to-read view. You can synchronize the Picniic calendar with Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook, and Yahoo as well.
The app is free. Available for Android.
8. Family Organizer-Calendar Planner :
If you are looking for a calendar organizer with sharing features that are free, Family Organizer is your solution. It has an intuitive interface that gives a family calendar wherein you can add assignments, and to-do lists with due dates, track birthdays, check the daily weather forecast, etc. You can even send reminders for the to-do lists and save your recipes.
This app also has some fun features like the daily journal where you can write short blogs including your recent family photos and share them with all family members to see.
You can sync your schedule in the app with other schedule organizers across devices. The app also has an interesting interface that even allows you to set customize the appearance by setting your own background music and photo
Available for Android.
9. Hub :
Yet another app you can use to have a shared family calendar. The Hub Calendar lets every family member stay updated on family events or appointments. It can also be used to share shopping lists, task lists, and to-do lists, to manage your grocery shopping and household chores. It also offers due dates and reminder features so that you can get everything done on time without missing anything.
With Hub, you can share or post photos and text on the home screen so that family members get to see the latest posts as soon as they open the app and never misses any family news.
The app has a free version and the Hub Gold subscription option with more features like unlimited sharing, syncing with other calendars, recurring events, and tasks, etc. starts at $4.99 monthly.
Available for Android.
10. FabFam :
FabFam is a simple and easy-to-use app that allows you to organize your families from anywhere. Using the FabFam app you can create a shopping list and organize by store or event, create to-do lists, chores, and much more. The shared calendar organizer helps you keep track of your family members’ schedules, add family events like birthdays or school appointments, and much more and effectively coordinate across the family.
The app has an advanced feature that lets store all your membership cards or loyalty cards in one place. You just need to S]scan or type the barcodes and then take a front and back picture of the cards. Everyone in the family can use the same card by showing the barcode at stores so that you can maximize points or discounts.
Available for Android.
Conclusion
Using the above-mentioned family/life organizer apps and apps like the GoKid carpool app for school kids are a great way to manage your family and be there for them always, even when you cannot physically be there.
