Wouldn’t a gift be great if it was free and helped with family harmony? Well I may have a suggestion for you.

For as many years as I can recall our family has had a big calendar book that sits on the kitchen counter by the phone. The idea was that if you had an appointment that might impact others in the family it would get entered here. This way Max might know that Leslie and I were going out with friends and that he might be on his own for dinner. Or Leslie would know in advance that I had a meeting on a particular evening and she could have the TV control to herself that night. You get the idea.

It was also a great place to insert birthdays and anniversaries, not that I ever forget them. : )

Well this all started to fall apart when Leslie acquired her iPad. She was quite thrilled with what the new technology offered. She set off very quickly to use the calendar function to keep track of her appointments. She entered the appointments in the iPad, her blackberry and the calendar by the phone. I kept mine in my Microsoft Outlook, which was synchronized with my Blackberry. Admittedly, I got a bit lazy about entering them in the calendar book. This meant that I might often hear “I didn’t know you were going out tonight, I don’t see it in the book”.

One day I gently broached a solution. I asked Leslie if she would consider the idea of a single Google “Family Calendar”.  We already both had Gmail addresses so it was very easy to share the calendar.  I was pleasantly surprised at her positive reaction.

We set up this shared calendar and agreed to enter all these mutual events in one place and stop all the multiple entries. We have both just moved from Blackberries to the Samsung Galaxy S3. This has really made the access and functionality very easy.

I’m pleased to tell you that this has worked out very well. The new mantra in the house is, “well I put it in the family calendar”. Leslie was so accepting of the solution that we started to use Cozi (cozi.com) for a shared grocery list. Please picture us at the grocery store with Leslie’s iPad in the cart.

And Max???  He wants no part of any of this.

Wishing you all a very harmonious new year.