As a school teacher, I became obsessed with Google Apps! Seriously obsessed. My whole life is now managed using Google Drive, Calendar, Keep, and Forms.
At work, I was known as the person to go to for Google tips. As a fourth grade teacher, I was a paperless classroom. Google was the most utilized tool in my toolbox to accomplish this.
If you look online on how to use Google in the classroom and how to go paperless, you will find an incredible number of resources! I am definitely not the only Google-obsessed teacher, and with Google Classroom becoming a prominent fixture in our schools, teachers have found so many tricks and new strategies using it!
But what about household management? I am always surprised when I go to look on budget managing, scheduling, and other “how to run a house” tips still suggest printable stuff. So each week, month, or year you print out new worksheets for your planning and household prep? Meh… Just like in my school life I love for everything to be digital!
Why go digital?
Well I’m not always the most put together mom (shocking, right?), and I don’t know about you, but making a grocery list on a cute little printout that I found online doesn’t really help me when that cute little printout is stuck on my refrigerator and I’m at the grocery store. You know what I do ALWAYS have? My phone. You know what my husband ALWAYS has? His phone.
Using Google allows me to check and update from anywhere and is continually updated for my husband as well because we use the handy-dandy sharing feature! I put something on my calendar and, like magic, it is also on his calendar! I add something to the shopping list, BOOM, he has the shopping list.
How Do I Start?
If you do not already have an account, it is as simple as setting up an email account. This is because that is what you are doing. You create a GMail Account at google.com and it is your account for all of your Google-related tools (even Youtube). No remembering a million usernames and passwords, no remembering where everything is. It is all right there on that Google account.
Google Calendar
If you are not ready to make the full leap here, AT least start using a Google Calendar. It is so easy to set up! Every phone has it built into their regular calendar settings to sync to a Google Calendar. You can also download the actual Google Calendar app.
The reason you need to have a cloud-based calendar, like a Google calendar is because you can add to it from your phone or your computer or even someone else’s computer! I was shocked when someone on my Facebook was panicked saying they’re phone broke and now all their appointments were lost! I immediately thought, “Do people still not have their calendars on an account that is backed up?” And the answer was yes. A lot of people don’t know to do this.
There are other cloud-based calendars. Google is extremely user-friendly and once you have a GMail account you have ALL the other Google apps ready to go! When you get in a phone you put in your Gmail and your calendar syncs, your email, your contacts, your chrome bookmarks, EVERYTHING!
Google Keep
Google Keep is another really handy tool that allows you to keep track of ideas and lists. The way it looks is almost like post-its. You can color-code and use tags to make it really easy to find the lists and notes that you need right then. I use a color for anything related to my blog, such as ideas and to-dos. Then I tag them accordingly. I use another color for anything that is household management related: shopping lists, things that need to be cleaned, recipe ideas, meal plan for the week, etc.
The notes that I want Max to have access to, I simply add him as a collaborator. I do this mainly with the shopping list. I never have to send him the list. If he’s out and about and decides to take a shopping trip, he pulls up the list and it is already updated and ready.
Google Drive
When you create a Google account, you also automatically have free cloud storage. Google apps such as docs, sheets, and slides have mostly replaced Microsoft Office for me. I can create it directly on my drive, it automatically saves all of my progress, there is the ever-present sharing feature, and it’s not taking up space on my computer. The best part? Of course, you have access from ANYWHERE. I can start a blog post as a Google Doc on my browser at home, then while waiting for an appointment pull out my phone and add a few more paragraphs while I wait!
My drive has folders for different categories of my life! You can even color code your folders to help you stay more organized!
Google Photos
Exactly what it sounds like, Google Photos is a place to store your pictures and videos. My phone is set up to automatically sync every picture I take to my photos drive. This allows me to clear out my phone memory every so often which keeps my phone running more smoothly (I take a lot of pictures) and it makes sure that I don’t lose photos. How sad would it be if I lost my phone and ALL those adorable photos I took of my kids with those great memories were all lost? This also happened to a friend of mine very recently. She had not backed up all the pictures she had taken of her baby from birth to almost a year! She was so sad that she no longer had those photos. Mine are all on my photos drive.
The photos drive also can use facial recognition to filter pictures. If I want to look at all the pictures I have of Harper, I can click on her face and filter out every picture that does not have her face in it! The AI on Google is legit!
Stay tuned for more Google tips and how to make your life easier!
If you want some great ideas for other activities to do with your kids, make sure to sign up for our email list to receive my list of “100 Indoor Activities To Do on a Rainy Day.”
[…] is great for things like this because it organizes everything like a binder. I also use my Google Drive to store things because it’s easy to share. I can download directly off of my drive or send a […]
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