A Planner for Mom: Motivated Moms {Crew Review}
As we entered a new calendar year, my thoughts once again turned to “how can I stay on top of all the things I need to do especially the cleaning!”. I caught the declutter-organize-and-this-time-we’re-going-to-keep-it-up bug. Fortunately, Motivated Moms was one of the first vendors of the 2014 Crew Year and crew members could choose between a Motivated Moms Ebook planner or Motivated Moms iOS App (with full year server access). Since I don’t have an i-anything, I gladly choose the 2014 Motivated Moms Printable Chore Planner {Black and White} Ebook.
What is Motivated Moms?
In the simplest of terms Motivated Moms is a chore schedule. Two friends who met online, collaborated together over time to create this detailed chore schedule to help moms have a clean and organized home. It’s been around for years. The About Page doesn’t list when Motivated Moms started offering the planner but it does list history as far back as 2005! It’s been around for even longer than I thought! Today Motivated moms is run by Susan Cramer. Her husband, Norm, created the app in 2010.
About the Planners:
Oh My! There are two basic types of planners: a page per day chore planner or a chore planner with the whole week on one page, but with the variations you have 16 different Ebook planners to choose from! 16!!! You can choose to have “black and white” or “color”. You can choose half page or full page. You can choose to include bible readings or not.
I chose the black and white, full page, no bible readings, weekly chore planner. The planner is 55 pages. Page 1 is a cover and page 55 is a blank two week menu planner. There are 53 weeks of planner pages. I love how the first week and the last week of the planner are full weeks; those pages just include two to three days of the previous or following year so that you have a full seven days.
This full page planner has a column on the left hand side for daily chores. Below each chore is a row of seven boxes so you can check it off each day. At the bottom of the column are several blank lines so that you can fill in additional daily chores specific to your family’s needs.
The main page is devoted to a week’s worth of chores divided between all seven days. Some chores, such as “change hand towels in bathroom,” will appear every couple of days. Some chores, such as “clip children’s fingernails,” appear once a week. This is a chore schedule that tracks the routine things like “change sheets” as well as those things many of us skip such as “clean light fixtures”.
In addition to “chores” there are reminders to pamper yourself, cut coupons, and clean our your purse! Every Friday has “spend time on a craft/hobby.” Each week there is some type of decluttering or organizing type of chore such as “clean out/de-clutter/organize medicine cabinets.”
Using the Motivated Moms Chore Planner:
I printed out the cover and all the weekly pages and took them to a local office store to have them spiral bound. I had the store add a clear plastic cover and a sturdy back. I wanted to be able to use this as family and assign specific chores to specific family members.
The first week, I only highlighted in yellow anything I knew I wanted to do, crossed off anything I knew we wouldn’t do and attempted to have people use highlighters to check off what they did. Each of my children is assigned a color. We’ve had these colors for years and I specifically bought high lighters in those colors. Using color coded checking off didn’t work so great so for the next two weeks I still just highlighted in yellow the things I wanted to accomplish, crossed off the things that didn’t apply or that I knew we just wouldn’t have time to do and just checked things off with a pen.
Then I stumbled upon a system that I really like. I sit down on Sunday afternoons and “organize” my weekly sheet. I still go through and cross things off with the pen. Some items on the list such as “clip coupons” just do not apply to my family. I then decide which items might need to be done on a different day. I prefer to make my menu plans and grocery lists on Wednesdays. Since *I* will be doing those, I highlight them yellow and I put a W next to it. I had already starting putting S’s for Saturday next to items that I though would have a better chance of getting done on Saturday. I pick out chores for each of the girls and I highlight them in their color.
The highlighted colors make the planner look pretty and the girls can see which items they need to do. More chores are getting done a regular basis and that makes us all feel better. I think Turtlegirl especially likes the list and she really seems to like doing those check marks!
I found though that I didn’t really like the the boxed off Daily Chores. In my ideal dream world I would like a separate daily chore page for each family member. I do like the daily chores listed but found that it was too hard to manage the checking off when there are 5 beds to make and 3 people taking medications and so on.
Our thoughts:
My house doesn't look better (yet) because we're still dealing with massive clutter and bad habit issues but dirty things (sometimes things others can't see cause I don't let visitors into places like pantry or master bedroom, and most don't have any reason to open the microwave LOL) are cleaner. I *feel* better because some of the "dirty things" that *bug me* are getting taken care of and "little things" like clean hand towels, toilet paper stock and filled soap dispensers are making life more pleasant.
When I asked my husband he said “no, things don’t look better {because of the clutter} but more things are getting done and getting done more often so the house overall is cleaner.”
The Details:
- The Vender: Motivated Moms
- The Product: 2014 Motivated Moms Printable Chore Planner {Black and White}
- Format: Ebook
- Price: $8
- Also Available: App versions for iOS and Androids
- NOTE: You can find Motived Moms on Facebook
Visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog to the direct Crew Post to read what others have to say about Motivated Moms.
You can read my other Schoolhouse Review Crew Reviews to find more great products.
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