Digital

While I doubt I'll ever completely do away with my paper planner/calendar, I have to admit that I love Google's web-based Cal­endar! It's certainly not the new kid on the block when it comes to online event track­ing, but it's still my favorite, simply because it can be used in so many ways.

The first, and most obvi­ous use, is as a basic calen­dar. The neat thing here is that you can set up a variety of different calendars and choose who you want to share them with. For ex­ample, I assign a different color coded calendar to each member of the family and make them visible to all of us. I've also assigned a cal­endar to "family" and one to "kids". That way if we're all attending an event, like last week's rodeo, I'll mark it as "family". If it's an event only the kids are attending, like a youth group trip to Silver­wood, I mark it "kids".

For those who haven't used Google Calendar (GCal), please don't think I'm actually setting up seven different calendars. I really see only one calendar. But when I record an appoint­ment, I choose the calendar (or person) it applies to. All of these events show on my calendar (unless I toggle them off, which I'll explain later) just as if I was writ­ing on a paper calendar and color coding appointments for each family member.

A unique feature in GCal is that you can choose which items are shared. For in­stance, my kids all have Google Calendar on their iP­ods and can see all the family and individual appointments. This is important because if a child needs to see if I'm able to chauffer them to a meet­ing or sports event, they can quickly glance at the calen­dar and see if I'm available. (Don't think I'm leaving my husband out - he doesn't use a smart phone or computer. Most of you would apply the same approach to your spouse, though.)

On our personal work cal­endars, I might track work items like story deadlines, while my kids might record homework assignments. We don't need to share these with one another, so they show only on our own ver­sion of the calendar. Cool, huh?

While only the title of the event shows on the calendar grid, you can click on it to add additional information such as the location or even notes like what you've been requested to bring to a pot­luck. If your calendar starts to look a bit busy, simply toggle off the calendars you don't need to see at that moment, and those items disappear from the grid. It's this feature that makes GCal ideal for use in ways other than simply time manage­ment.

Many people take ad­vantage of GCal for meal planning. By setting up a calendar for "Meals" you can plan your meals, then simply toggle your other calendars off and print out a Meal Calendar. When you find a recipe online, simply paste it into the Notes for that meal and it's immediately available when you're ready to cook. You can quickly and easily set meals to repeat as well. If Friday is always homemade pizza night, sim­ply set it to repeat weekly on your Meal Calendar. Plan­ning this way also simplifies grocery shopping. Access your calendar via your smart phone to make sure you have all the ingredients you need for the upcoming week.

Just think of all the calen­dars you could create to help keep you on track: birthdays and anniversaries, chores, fitness goals or workout schedules, bill payments, car and home maintenance. Each one of these items can be set up as its own calendar and kept hidden or viewed as needed.

Another popular feature of GCal is the ability to set reminders. You can set reminders for events and have them sent via email, text or as a pop-up. You decide when you'd like the reminder sent. Perhaps you'd like a week's warning to purchase a birthday gift, but only need a 30 minute reminder prior to a meet­ing. Just set it accordingly when you enter the event and you're covered. Reminders are also a handy way to make sure you don't miss a sale or discount you wanted to take advantage of.

As you can see, GCal is an extremely versatile tool that can be tweaked to work however you'd like. Set up dozens of calendars and have your life neatly organized and readily accessible, use it as a household manage­ment tool to track meals and chores, or simply take advantage of the ability to have notifications of birth­days and anniversaries sent to your email. Oh, and did I mention that it's complete­ly free as well? To set up your own GCal, visit https:// www.google.com/calendar/