Calendars, Tasks, and Allowances

Google calendar lets you have several different task lists. I know from experience that

having my "to do's" sorted and assigned to certain days of the week helps me to not feel overwhelmed. So this morning (after my prayer time and editing commentary on Ezekiel 29), I made/renamed my task lists according to the days of the week.

• All work for my church gets done on Monday. First Fruits of my time and all that.
• All business and blogging kind of stuff gets done on Tuesday.
• Correcting my children's writing from school, working on their blogs and Etsy shop, and so on gets done on Wednesday.
• Menus, coupons, sale hunting, and shopping lists get done on Thursdays.
• Writing (books, pamphlets, articles, etc) as well has running MalwareBytes and Ccleaner on all the computers gets done on Fridays.
• Cooking for church (bread and desert), as well as any extra cooking and handcrafts get done on Saturday
• The only "work" I allow myself on Sunday's is crocheting (which is more fun that work) and laundry.

In addition, I have a "house to do" list which includes making yogurt (we save close to $30 a week by making it instead of buying individual servings), kefir, buttermilk, soaps, big cleaning chores, and gardening chores.

I am hoping this will help me get over the feeling of being overwhelmed I have had so much lately.



I actually started yesterday with writing. I was able to get six pages up to our church's website. I have known for some time we needed something explaining our views of of Israel and prophecy (we believe differently than most Evangelicals), but have felt too overwhelmed to write them. It dawned on me while talking to my mom I already had something written I could use. I expected one page, but it just kept growing! Feels good to have that job done?:-)



We have changed how we do the kids allowances. Before we gave them all their allowances on the second Friday of the month, but this added more than $100 to our budget for that week! I have made two big changes in the last month:

• We are now doing two kids a week. I even added it to my chore calendar. This makes it about $30 a week which is much more hand-able.
• We have opened Akimbo accounts. This is a pre-loaded credit card designed just for allowance-type stuff. The parent opens a main account and can add up to five sub-accounts. Each account gets it's own visa card. I move allowance money to my card each week and than to the appropriate child's card. (My Jim (19) has his own bank account and PayPal so he didn't need an Akimbo card. My Joy will open her own Akimbo account I can just send her allowance to. She has no interest in a brick-and-mortar account of her own). We are just getting this set up, but I think it will work well. I seldom have cash on hand so it has been where the kids try to spend all their money as soon as they get it so I don't forget. With their own cards they can save if they want, buy at Amazon, Wall-mart, even our thrift stores without worrying if I have the money or not. And, most importantly, they have to keep track of their money and make appropriate decisions on budgeting. This should build much better habits.

I am looking for an app where I can put in store websites and get a comparison of prices for the week for each item on my shopping list. Any ideas?