Remember the Milk

I may have just eliminated my need for a paper planner!  I have had a paper planner for as long as I can remember.  All through out middle school up through college my favorite part of August (other than my birthday) was picking out a new planner!!

Now that I am a home manager the need for a planner is even bigger.  So far I have depended on Google Calendar, my iPad, and a paper planner to stay organized.  I've tried to use larger planner systems, but it never quite worked out.  The problem has been I don't always have my iPad and I don't always have my paper planner to write things down in.  Enter the iPhone!  Verizon recently changed their data plan and I was able to finally buy an iPhone with some left over Christmas money that was collecting dust.  Now my Google Calendar is ALWAYS with me :)

Last week my sister was telling me about a list app that she was enjoying and I remembered that Simple Mom had suggested Remember the Milk years ago.  I decided to try it again since it now has an iPhone and iPad app.  It has been wonderful!  I decided to splurge and get a pro account so that my lists would always be synced across my devices, but this is definitely not necessary.

I love this task manager for a couple of reasons:

• you can organize tasks by lists.  So far I have: Blog posts to write, Evening Routine, Gift Ideas, Home Management, Kids, Money Matters, Morning Routine, School, Study, and Tidy Up Tuesday.  There are also two default lists of "Inbox" for routines you email yourself (or Siri sets up for you) and "Sent" which I think is used for tasks you share with others.
• you can use shortcuts to set up when a list is due, priority, when it repeats, where it takes place, and to add tags.  Tags help you to sort your task based on subject.  I have a tag for computer tasks that I use to help me get things done while I'm at the computer.  You can also use tags to sort by tasks that you have for different children.  Here is the list of shortcuts:

          If you wanted to use these shortcuts it would type this in the "add a new task" section of the website:  "Call Betsy ^tomorrow !2 *weekly"  Then a new task will be created with all of the parameters you have specified.  You can also email this to your RTM account and it will set up the task for you.

• you can also set a task to repeat based on when it was last done instead of just when it was last due.  This is helpful for things like taking your vitamins.  You want to take them once a day, but if you forget them today you don't want to take two tomorrow.
• you can associate notes or a URL with each task.  I do my grocery shopping on Monday, so I have a reminder on Sunday night to do my meal planning.    I use the note feature to keep track of meals that I see during the week that I think would be interesting.   

Even if you don't have a smart phone remember the milk can send you text messages or email reminders when tasks are due.  I choose to do most of my household cleaning on Tuesday hence the list "Tidy up Tuesday" I have a morning and evening routine based on Tsh's book 52 projects to a simpler life.  She encouraged readers to choose 3 to 5 things you do every morning and every evening. this helps bring structure to an otherwise unstructured day.
 Here is a view of my current account:

I have just started using Tsh's suggestion of identifying three things a day that are your most important tasks and marking them priority 1 (orange in color).  I do not mark anything else with that priority so that each day I can choose three new things.

Please ask any other questions you have in the comments section.  I hope I've given a quick overview and have helped you get started with this great website!