Without further ado, here are 25 tools, products, services, downloads, and freebies that will help you do what you really want to do - have time to play with your family!
Household Help
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Thunderbird Grocery List Generator - Free Thunderbird Add-On
The GLG (Grocery List Generator) is a helpful little tool to store your recipe-ingredients and other groceries you need regularly. It creates a well-organized grocery list to help make your grocery shopping as easy as possible. -
Amazon Grocery - New “Subscribe & Save” Program
Amazon has a new subscription service for non-perishable groceries, in which you can have an ongoing order of your regular products delivered for free and for a discount on a monthly basis (or whatever schedule you would like). -
Sittercity.com - Find a Babysitter, Nanny, Petsitter or Housesitter
The largest sitter-matching site, offering sitters with background checks and parents’ sitter ratings. (US only) -
Pet Management - From Download.com
This can help pet owners with many of the responsibilities that go along with owning a pet. It helps you organize pet records, reminds you of vaccinations and important dates, and prints many useful pages such as pet sitter instructions, greeting cards, missing posters -
DoMyStuff.com - Outsource the Crappy Stuff
Chores, errands, anything on your to-do list that can be done by someone else can be posted on this site. Assistants bid on projects and they offer an escrow service to facilitate payment. Free to post tasks and bid on projects.
Family Communications
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Voicemail Bling
Vonage offers free email delivery of voicemails with their regular plans, or
GotVoice offers the same plus voicemail blasts to multiple numbers, plus text messaging via cell or desktop widgets. -
Earth Class Mail- Snail Mail Delivered via Email
View scanned images of your sealed envelopes online, and with a few mouse clicks have your mail securely scanned into a PDF document, recycled, shredded or mailed to you or someone else. I’m terrible with paper - this is a dream for every filing-challenged parent like me!
Scheduling & Organization
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Amy Knapp’s Family Organizer - Home Day Planner
A fairly inexpensive daily organizer for the at-home parent, with several other products to help all family members stay organized. -
MomAgenda - Mom Organizer
They sell pretty and sleek day planners for moms with a free downloadable program to create and print your own pages. -
Household Notebook - Free Downloadable Planner
A free semi-comparable version of the above planners. -
Custody Tool/Scheduler - from Download.com
Whether you’re in a difficult custody battle or a harmonious custody sharing situation, Custody Toolbox can help. It features a color-coded calendar, a searchable journal, a child info database, an address book with birthday and anniversary reminders, and password protection. The latest version has a schedule wizard, computes parenting time percentages, and multiple daily categorized searchable journal entries. -
HomeWise Software - from Download.com
HOMEwise is the most comprehensive yet easy-to-use home and family organizer and personal assistant on the market. HOMEwise includes over 170 features and functions including home inventory, garden and building project planners and trackers, bank account records, ‘to-do’ lists, personal collection databases, calendars, phone books, diaries, shopping lists, recipes, snack and meal planners, and travel planners and organizer.
Parent Helpers
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ChipIn - Online Fundraising
Help to collect money for a personal cause, group purchase, or fundraiser using your own custom ChipIn page. They also have blog and Facebook widgets to promote and track money raised. -
Pregnancy Calendar - from Download.com
A pregnancy calendar program that keeps the mother-to-be aware with a week-by-week information about every change happens in her body and for his baby. Tips are put there for every week for the mother’s health. -
Ovulation Calendar - from Download.com
Calculates fertility period based on menstrual cycle and luteal phase. Also predicts highest probability of conceiving a boy or a girl (don’t ask me how - I have no clue).
Shopping Helpers
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Upromise.com- Rewards Program
A free rewards service for eligible purchases on groceries, gasoline, online shopping, etc. at over 40,000 participating retail stores and services. A percentage of every purchase goes into a college savings account. -
iKobo.com- Prepaid Debit Cards
Help kids learn to spend on credit or give them a protected way to carry larger amounts of money. -
BabyToBee.com- Free Baby Stuff
Take advantage of the fact that you are one of the most coveted demographics on the planet - marketers fall over themselves for new parents and give away free stuff all of the time to you!
Educational Tools, Downloads and Services
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Tutor.com- On Demand Tutoring
7 days a week during after-school hours, Tutor.com offers live tutors on call to help kids with homework from 4th - 12th grades. You can try it out for $5 and purchase a subscription or pay-as-you-go. And they also hire work at home parents to do the tutoring (*bonus*)! -
School Organizer - from Download.com
Helps kids organize everyday life with an automatic school schedule, event and task calendar, sticky notes, sound reminders, and friend’s information. -
SmartBaby Flashcards - from Download.com
This flash cards program helps teach infants, toddlers, and preschoolers so that they have enhanced reading abilities, in speed and comprehension. -
Kid Browser - from Download.com
Kid-safe Internet browser made just for kids. Designed to be simple for parents to install and to use. Protects children from pornography and Internet predators. Uses a white-list technology so parents can decide what is suitable for their children and what isn’t. -
Kids Chore Chart/Point system - from Download.com
Point System - Your teenagers have to earn points in order to gain privileges. There is also a consequence section to subtract points if you chose to do so.
MyRewardBoard - Geared toward younger kids with reward coupons, fun animations and achievement certificates; this unique program turns chores and goals into fun and games. -
Toddler Keys - from Download.com
This is a useful tool for parents that allows you to lock your computer keyboard, CD drive doors, and power-off button. When the keyboard is used it will display images and play sounds every time a key is pressed, thereby preventing access to the desktop and applications. -
Family Bank - from Download.com
Kid’s allowance program. Teaches children to spend wisely, save regularly and avoid debt. Includes auto-deposit, savings, loans and chores modules. Register tracks spending and displays pie charts.
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Thanks for the list! There are a few items there that I’m going to have to check out to see if they’d work in my life. It’s amazing the things that are available nowadays.
There are some great sites here. The Amazon one was especially interesting. Thanks for putting them all together.
What a great list! I haven’t heard of a lot of these - there goes my productivity as I go check them all out
I am not an e-mom , but I can see some great tools those of us without kids can use to be more productive
Awesome list Wendy. I especially like the household help items. I’m off to check out SitterCity right now!
For groceries, my coupons form my list! I like getting to the checkout and watching how much money I saved. But I hate those ‘membership’ cards, because they are such a gip. Sometimes I forget mine and then the stores know you aren’t gonna run out to go get it, and they charge you ‘full price’ for your groceries.
I just want to add my favorite mom calendar, BusyBodyBook personal & Family Organizer. I buy it every year at http://www.busybodybook.com.
Wow Wendy, thanks! I think I could use the Household Notebook, I’ll have to learn more about it.
Excellent list! I´ve been wanting to find some programs that my toddler can use and there were several on your list, plus I found more while browsing Download.com. Thank you very much.
After reading this I thought I would leave a note about a tool and client of mine that might help people think about their communications.
This might be helpful for you guys. A client of mine has a new free email program with self-destructing email, email you can’t print or forward and free video email. Check out:
http://www.BigString.com
It is a new free webmail program. When you send mail from your BigString account, you are protected. BigString is like an automatic shredder for your email. You can self-destruct or change an email that’s already been sent or read.
Ever send that email to your boss at 2AM ranting, or a picture of your girlfriend to your mom by mistake, just have one of those “DOH” moments you wish you could bring it back, try this tool!
Have a great day!
Michael
michaelf@bigstring.com
This is a very useful list. Those on the organization are really great. Thanks for sharing this.
As always, great tips for anyone..
Maybe someday I’ll be able to apply them to a helter skelter life.
Great list. I actually made it my “Something Good” today! Thanks for putting it together.
This list is great, I love the inclusion of GotVoice, I tried it and it was pretty good even though I ended up going with youmail because it let me record a separate voicemail greeting for everyone on my phone. Thanks for the list!