19 Kids, 19 Schedules: How the Duggars Stay Organized


A chore chart keeps things organized.
A chore chart keeps things organized.

Even though we're able to spend a lot of time with one another in our family, we still have to keep tabs on who's doing what, who needs to be where and what's on our to-do and shopping lists. We still use a hard copy calendar, but we've come to rely on technology more and more.

We use the Cozi iPhone app -- it's great, and it's free. It's accessible to our whole family, and if any of our older children have something coming up they can punch it into the Cozi calendar themselves and we all know what's going on.

It helps us keep organized calendar-wise, as well as our to-do and shopping lists. If Jim Bob and I are talking about something on the family to-do list we can just add it in. Jim Bob may say, "OK we'll put that on John's to-do list." And if our older girls are out shopping then they always know that they can pull up the shopping list and see what we need from Sam's or Wal-Mart or wherever they happen to be.

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For families that have some older children, younger, or just a busy schedules, it helps to keep everybody on track. But our hard copy calendar is still where I put all of my little notes about what happened that day or something funny one of the kids said. I haven't been the best about doing baby books, but if my kids say something I want to remember I'll say, "Run and write that on the calendar right now! We don't want to forget that -- it's too funny to miss."

So we jot all those little things on the calendar on the edges and around the appointments. I love my hard copy calendars because I can go back and look at those from years gone by and remember every activity we had for that week and the funny things the kids did, the new tooth that was cut or the tooth that was just lost -- they're all in those calendars. And they were priceless when we were writing our books -- to and able to go back and look at those calendars because it reminded us of a lot of different things. And that was wonderful.

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I need to start typing in those sweet little things the kids say and the funny things they do into the family journal part of the app. But the big wall calendar is our hard copy version of life. Of course, it's always good to have it backed up -- that's what my older kids say. "Everything's going digital and you have to have everything backed up!" I'm like, "Yeah, you're right. I have to get into the swing of that."

This post was written by Michelle Duggar.

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