FAMILY MEDIA

The Best Apps to Help Busy Families Stay Organized

How to manage the daily grind and keep everyone on track

By Vicky McDonald

Managing a family takes a lot of hard work and coordination: There’s meal planning, shopping, cooking, cleaning, extracurricular activities, arranging appointments … and then your dishwasher breaks.

With all this to juggle, some parents have resorted to using corporate project management tools such as Trello (trello.com) and Slack (slack.com) to organize their family life. We asked our readers, and the following are some of their favorite apps for keeping on top of everything.

GENERAL FAMILY PLANNERS

Cozi (cozi.com) is by far the most pop

ular choice of the families we surveyed. This multipurpose app lets you create and share a family calendar and send appointment reminders. You can also keep and share grocery lists, recipes and meal plans.

CALENDAR APPS

Between school, work, and family activities and obligations, it can be hard to keep track of exactly where everyone needs to be at any given moment. These days, many families opt for a shared online calendar.

Google Calendar (calendar.google.com) is the popular choice for our Puget Sound–area readers. It’s a free service, and you can share calendars with family members and receive calendar notifications. It’s easy to use, and all members of the family can edit and view the calendar from most devices.

Other popular choices are Apple iCalendar (apps.apple.com) and Microsoft Outlook Calendar (outlooklive.com).

TO-DO LISTS

Instead of the traditional journal or whiteboard, many parents use note-taking apps to stay on track. Many of these apps allow you to create and edit multiple lists and plans. You can color-code your lists, sync your notes across devices, and snip and save favorite articles and recipes from websites. Among the favorites are Google Keep (keep.google.com), Evernote (evernote.com), OneNote (onenote.com) and the Microsoft To Do app (microsoft.com).

MEAL PLANNERS

The answer to “What’s for dinner?” is a daily conundrum for most parents. Whether you are looking for new, kid-approved recipes or just want a place to keep track of what to make each day, there are multiple apps and services to help feed your crew day after day after day after day.…

Paprika (paprikaapp.com) is a favorite among some of our readers. It’s an app that helps you organize your recipes, make meal plans and create grocery lists. Relish! (relishrelish.com) and Prepear (apps.apple.com) also received kudos.

SHOPPING APPS

When you become a parent (particularly in the time of a pandemic!), you soon realize that going to a brick-and-mortar store with kids in tow can be a nightmare. Thank goodness for online shopping!

Amazon Prime (amazon.com) is a popular choice among the families we surveyed. This Seattle-based company makes life easy for families and pretty much delivers anything to your door within two days — or even two hours, with Prime Now.

Fred Meyer Pickup (formerly ClickList; fredmeyer.com), Instacart (instacart.com) and Walmart Grocery Pickup (grocery.walmart.com) were also mentioned for quick and easy grocery shopping without the hassle of going into the actual store. ■ Vicky McDonald is ParentMap’s digital content editor and a mother of two.