How to Use Google Calendar for Your Family

In this video, I'm going to show you how to use Google Calendar to share your family's schedule in real time with all of the members of your family. 

See if you can relate to this scenario: it's Tuesday morning, as your son is headed out the door and you have 500 things on your mind, you realize you haven't yet given him the plan for the day. So you run out after him yelling, "Remember!  Today is Tuesday, so I'm picking up from school and taking you directly to tennis. Do you have your tennis shoes?  No, okay -- I'll pack them. Also, Dad is picking you up, so make sure you call him when you are finished. And I'm taking your sister to choir, so I won't be there when you get back!"  

Or how many times have you had this conversation with your husband. Where he says: "Wait what is the schedule this weekend?  Who has a tournament, where is it, who's driving?  Can you just review everything that is going on both days for me?"

Sound familiar?  Okay -- I really can't promise that this is going to solve the problem of everyone wanting you to review their schedule for them on a moment's notice like you are the family admin, but this will ensure that they actually have the information on hand rather than having to hunt you down for it. 

I've always been a little obsessed with calendars.  When I was young, I wrote my journal in a cast off weekly planner of my mom's. The year was always wrong, but that didn't deter me from filling in the days and scratching through dates.  //image// I used to look at the empty pages and wish for some Appointments, so that I could importantly schedule them into the open pages of my young life.  

Like everyone else these days, now I feel like maybe I'd like several fewer appointments every day. They don't seem Important as much as they seem Mandatory. For years I used a weekly planner, color coding the events and blocking off time. When electronic calendars came out, I was an early adopter. I missed some things about paper planning like the tactile remembrance of writing, being able to flip easily to a future week and being able to use visual aids like large letters, different colors or drawings to differentiate appointments immediately.  Though I missed those things (and I still do) electronic calendars offered two important advantages: 1) //Portability// the ability to keep my calendar in a smaller package, thereby allowing me to have it accessible at all times and 2) //Recurring Appointments// the ability to enter recurring appointments with a couple of clicks. Those two advantages plus my constant push to digitize and become paperless made me fully embrace electronic calendaring despite some of the drawbacks. 

I'm a Google apps fan. I use gmail, Google Drive and Google Calendar. Everyone in my family has a gmail account and therefore, has access to all of the free Google services -- including Google Calendar.  This system involves creating an additional calendar on your Google account -- the Family Calendar -- and then sharing that with everyone in your family. Here are some of the //advantages://

• Invites didn't work //Annoying Invites// You don't have to worry about inviting all of your family to each event like this //demo// I found this to be tedious, error prone and spamilicious. Been there, done that. No thanks. I have issues with Google Calendar's invite system -- I feel like unless you are very careful you will spam every invitee every time you make a tiny edit to your event. Who wants that in their inbox?  Plus I kept forgetting to invite people or and didn't like having to make invite decisions for each event. 
• Another benefit?  It's //Expandable//.  I toggle this calendar on and off on my mom's phone if she is staying with the kids for the weekend.  This would also be good for nannys or summer babysitters.
• Also, it helps with //Details//. Everyone knows (or at least doesn't have an excuse for not knowing) what is happening all the time. Where is each member of the family? I put carpooling arrangements in the event titles so the kids know who is driving, etc. I imbed event detail in the notes section (if I think about it and have time), so that everyone has access to the same info. 
• This is maybe my favorite advantage -- //Location//.  I always fill out the location line of every event so that I don't have to text my husband and address and directions at inoportune times.  

Here's how you do it. 

Step 1 - Make 2 Google Calendars

First -- you'll need to have a Google account and so will all of the members of your family. They do not need to use this email address or any of the other Google services unless they want to. This is simply a sharing mechanism for calendars. From your Google account, you will need to add a Family calendar -- so that would give you a minimum of 2 calendars: a personal one and a family one.  You could keep it all on one calendar, but then when you share it, your whole family will know about all of your daytime business events and lunches with friends. For reasonably obvious reasons, I prefer to keep those things on a different calendar. 

In Google Calendar, go to My Calendars --> and then Create New Calendar --> enter the name. I chose "Family Calendar".  We'll come back to sharing later. 

Step 2 - Choose Calendars for each event

Now for each appointment that you put in, you'll need to choose what calendar it appears in. I have the Family Calendar listed as the default on my phone since I tend to have more family appointments than personal. Go to Settings --> Calendar --> then choose Family Calendar as the default.  //demo//  I can't figure out how to do this from a browser, so I have to change the calendar more frequently.  You'll need to create some behavioral rules for yourself to determine when an appointment goes in which calendar. Here are mine:

• Family Calendar - appointments that happens after the kids get home from school or on the weekends. Even if it specifically pertains to me but is in the evening, it is useful for everyone to have an idea of where I am in the evenings and weekends. 
• Lara's Personal Calendar - appointments that happen during school hours. I make exceptions for kids doctors and dentist appointments that happen during the school day since those are relevant to the family. Also, if the kids are on break or my husband is taking a day off, I may put those appointments on the family calendar. Also, if I'm using an appointment as a reminder tool for myself, I try not to clutter up the Family Calendar (e.g. Don't forgot to put out donations for Purple Heart to pick up.)

Step 3 - Check regularly to make sure you are using the right Calendars

This is actually pretty easy if you use my rules. Google Calendar makes the appointments from different calendars different colors.  Because my rules follow the time of day (basically), you can scan your calendar to make sure that all of the stuff in the morning and early afternoon are in one color and the stuff in the evenings and weekends are in another.  Once you are doing this habitually, you won't need as many deliberate checks. Plus it will be slightly jarring when something is out of place once you get used to the color scheme. 

Step 4 - Share the Family Calendar with the other members of your family

Now it is time to share this calendar with the other members of your family. If you didn't do this when you set up the calendar, go back into the settings of the calendar and share it with the members of your family by email address. From a browser, go to //demo// My Calendars --> Settings --> and add all of the emails of the members of your family.  You can choose what kind of access you want to give them: do you want them to only only see the appointments you have entered or do you want them to be able to edit appointments on the Family calendar?  Once you have done that, they should be able to "turn on" access to the Family calendar within a browser //demo//.  Make sure everyone has this calendar turned on.  You may have to go into the Google Calendar Settings page and check the box to have the calendar show up. //demo//

Step 5 - Turn on for Mobile Devices

Next, turn the Family Calendar on each mobile device for your family. Because if your family can't see the calendar on their mobile devices, then WHAT IS EVEN THE POINT??!!  I don't have a Droid, so I'm not certain, but I'm assuming that because Google services are indigenous to the operating system, that this should be a straightforward process on those phones to add a Calendar.  On Apple devices, here is how you add the Family calendar to each of your family members' devices. Go to Settings --> Calendar --> Accounts --> and choose to Add Account. Pick "Google" then put in your family member's Google email address (remember -- not yours) and password and turn on the Calendar option. You can obviously also turn on other services if desired.  Now, when you go into the Calendar app, it should show up under Calendars.  

Unfortunately, it's not always quite that easy. If it doesn't show up -- don't panic. Go into each individual device and go to the following URL: www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect. Hopefully the calendar will show up there. Check the box and hit save.  Now let's see whether that calendar shows up on the iPhone now. It might take a moment or two, but Voila!!  

Optional - Change Color on iPhone

If you use Google Calendar on a browser as well as a mobile device, you'll notice that the browser does not allow you to change the color for your shared calendar. You can see mine was assigned a lovely brown color.  I don't love all of the extra mental processing involved in having to remember that my calendars are different colors on different devices, so I change the color of the calendar on my mobile device to match the browser.  //demo// Go into Calendars, tap the icon to the right of the calendar and select the color you want. 

Okay -- so now you can see that I'm all synced up on my browser and my mobile device and that my kids and husband can see only the appointments that I make available to them through the Family Calendar.  Again, you can play around with the permission settings depending on how trustworthy and detail-oriented the members of your family are. I can imagine plenty of families with older kids opening the settings up to allow anyone to add and modify appointments. Not in my house right now. Or else I'm afraid all of my son's least fun activities will magically disappear.  For now, my husband and I are the only ones who can add or edit appointments. 

Anyway -- this is the system that works best for us. I will not lie and tell you that I never go running out the door yelling 10,000 instructions for the day, but it definitely makes life a little easier. Let me know if you have questions or a better system to share in the comments section. Thanks for watching!