Family Message Center

These are some little projects I did several months ago, but I wanted to share the results and my goals for the future.

Previously we've used www.cozi.com to organize our shopping lists, calender, to do lists, and to even plan meals. Cozi is amazing, and has an app for our phones, my kindle fire, and our computer. Plus it's free!! Cozi was everything I dreamed of. When Joe and I both had the apps on our phones our calenders would sync, we could both edit the shopping list, and see the list when either of us stopped at the store. It seemed that with Cozi in our lives, the possibilities were endless. Cozi only failed us because Joe never used it.



He came to me a couple of months after the Cozi system was in place and complained that I never got anything at the grocery store that he liked anymore. I was puzzled asking, "If you want something why don't you add it to the list?"

He thought for a second and replied, "I don't know, I feel silly now that you say that." But going forward he still never used the Cozi list.

Eventually I decided that even though Cozi rocked, our family needed something more Joe friendly. I lined some cabinets with chalk board contact paper and turned some old picture frames into dry erase boards, and quickly created a family message center.

I chose contact paper (purchased on Amazon.com) over chalk board paint because it would be easier to get rid of if we ever decided that we don't want it anymore. It's in the cabinet with the coffee mugs which is convenient for messages like "Good morning, honey, I already let Benny out to pee." But mostly we get messages from our friend Brittany saying hello, or assigning us awkward "To Do" lists. Got to love that Brittany :)

For the dry erase boards all I did was turn the default pictures of the fake families over so we would have a white background. For the calender I got out my ruler and made a grid on the white background with seven columns and five rows.

This system gets more use from Joe and he's much happier now that he's more comfortable adding his requests to the shopping list, but it's just not as cute as I'd like it to be. I still do my meal planning on Cozi which has been an issue when the internet is down and I can't get to my recipes. I'm in the process of printing them and organizing a recipe binder. And after the holidays I look forward to remodeling our family message center.

I've been keeping my eye out for inspiration on Pinterest. I've really enjoyed McKenzie's Organization Board Tutorial on her blog Girl Loves Glam and Lauren's The Menu Planner to Rule Them All on her blog The Thinking Closet.