Inside: Reasons Why Mothers Should Learn To Use Spreadsheets. Collaborative post.
When you need to organize your life as a busy mom, Google Sheets and other spreadsheet programs are an ideal way to do just that.
Spreadsheets are not just for number crunching anymore. Here, you can cross off things on your to-do list, handle your grocery list and your budget at the same time, and also make sure that your children’s chores are done. You can even sum up how long it takes for each child to do each chore.
Spreadsheets can really help you keep every part of your life, and your family’s lives, organized. Learn more about the top reasons why mothers should learn to use spreadsheets.
Use Templates For All of Your Lists
Templates can be used for all of your mom lists. Every spreadsheet program has a large range of templates for you to use.
From your pantry inventory to your to-do lists, there is a template for everything on every spreadsheet program available.
Google Sheets is a free spreadsheet program that will make it even easier to use for you. You won’t have to pay the subscription fee that you may have to elsewhere.
Templates are available for every kind of spreadsheet user. You can select a daily template, a weekly template, or a monthly calendar type template.
Most spreadsheet programs have a gallery that you can use to select the template that you want.
Plan ahead and put your to-do lists by the day, week, or month, and create drop-down menus for when they are completed.
Create Budgets and Grocery Sheets
Creating budgets is something that spreadsheets were invented for. You can create a very simple budget using Google Sheets or an Excel program that you or anyone in the family can use.
Automated budgeting in spreadsheet formulas allows you to track what is going on in your finances by the day, the week, the month, and even the year. You can learn formulas as you go, and don’t need to be a technical guru to do it.
You may want to have one sheet for your income, another for your expenses, and another for household items, like grocery lists. But you also may want to incorporate all of your lists and sheets into one.
You can use tabs in sheets for each of these sections, or get creative with software like Google Suite.
Enter your weekly grocery list on one spreadsheet, and add or modify it from week to week or by the month. Then, link that back to your budget line for grocery expenses.
You are now a Google Suite goddess.
Use Formulas to Win the Mom Game
Formulas in spreadsheets can help you to win the mom game in any of these list activities or more. Chores are another simple way to use spreadsheets. Duplicates can be highlighted here as well.
In your chores spreadsheet, you can summarize exactly how much time your children spend on each chore. This will help them to become more efficient in their chores. You can add their incentives here as well, and show them exactly how they are doing, and what they are rewarded for.
Duplicate chores, or names of your children, may also show up on occasion. Highlight these by using the highlight duplicate function. For this formula, go to the Format Tab in Google, choose Conditional Formatting, and create your formula for how you want to highlight the duplicates. You can choose a different color for each child, or each chore.
Another formula that you use when you are hammering out a spreadsheet is one like the If function in Google Sheets. This allows you to create a formula, with a defined response such as Yes or No.
So, if a chore was completed, for example in less than one hour, then the end result would be a YES. You could even leave the YES value for the child that gets the incentive that week or month.
So your formula will look like “=If (A1>B1, “Yes”,”No”), if A1 is greater than B1. If say, you want the A column to be the average time spent on chores, and the B column to be the actual time spent on chores that day, then the YES value would appear and the child will have earned an incentive for say, beating their own average.
Become a Superhero Mom With Spreadsheets
You can bring home the bacon, fry it up, and organize it all for them to help you do all of that with spreadsheets. Become a superhero mom, even more than you already are, with a little help from your favorite spreadsheet program.
You can use easy step-by-step tutorials at SpreadsheetPoint.com to learn how to become a spreadsheet wizard. Start using spreadsheets today to make mom life just a little simpler.