This story originally appeared on one of The Local Moms Network local sites, West University Moms.
Between shuffling kiddos to school, their activities, appointments, exercise, and never-ending errands, many of us moms feel rushed and anxious. Although we try not to add our phones to the list of distractions, they can be helpful when we use them to help organize our time, build better schedules, receive reminders, and more. Here are 7 apps that can help shed some of the mom stress!
Habit List
Habit List’s tagline is “Build a better you,” and everything inside the app is geared towards that. It tries to gently nudge you into developing good habits to reach your goals, by motivating you, helping you stay focused, and keeping you on target. Cost: Free to use, but you can upgrade with a one-time fee of $5. Habit List is only available for iOS but Android users can try replacing it with a similar app called Habit Streak.
Todoist
Todoist is one of the most popular to do list apps, and can help you arrange tasks by nesting them within one another, which lets you keep work and personal items separate. For recurring tasks like taking out the garbage or paying your phone bill, you can set to-dos that will repeat on a regular schedule—if you need to do something every week, Todoist won’t forget about it. Cost: Free and you can upgrade to Premium plans for $29 a year which allows you to request reminders based on either time or location, enjoy automatic backups, and receive workflow charts. Free.
RescueTime
Maximize the time you have with Rescue Time, a time-management tool that shows you clearly where every second of your day is going. The app provides a personal analytics service that not only models how you spend your day, but provides tools to help you be more productive. Free.
Google Keep
As a mom, we are constantly taking notes – either mentally or consolidating scribbles, lists and sometimes even texts to ourselves. Google Keep stores and organizes your notes and can label them by color or category with specific words, like “kids”, “finances”, “hubby”, etc. Google Keep offers a variety of tools for taking notes, including text, lists, images, and audio which can be shared with other users or converted to a Google Docs file. Free.
Trello
Trello works well for families and can be used for a variety of purposes, including keeping track of your projects and ideas. Whether you want to book a vacation or throw a birthday party, plan out weekly meals or renovate your kitchen, Trello is a great place to keep all of life’s activities in order. And it’s perfect for collaborating with friends too—this way, you’ll never forget who’s bringing the birthday balloons again. Cost is free and has paid plans for $20 and up.
Pocket
Pocket, which was originally called Read it Later, is used to capture content and curate your own space filled with only the topics you are interested in. You can bookmark and save the latest stories, articles, news, sports and videos from any device, and any publisher or app. Free.
Fun Summer Grillin’ Idea: Hot Dog Bar!
Besides ice cream, there are few foods that scream “summer” more than hot dogs, right? So on this summer weather weekend, we wanted to share this adorable hot dog bar from one of our favorite food bloggers, Jessica Merchant of...
The Local Moms Network Summer Reading Guide
If we’re being real here, summer reading for moms can be a bit of a pipe dream, particularly for those of us who have young kids (as in, you need to be 100 percent focused on them to keep them alive). Or kids with crazy sports schedules. Or...
Meet a Mom: DJ April Larken
This story was adapted from one that originally ran on Greenwich Moms. This week’s Meet a Mom is DJ April Larken. After a successful career in the bridal industry (including stints spent working at Vera Wang and Carolina Herrera), and time spent as...