This post may contain one or more affiliate product links. Pursuit of Simple is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. View my Disclosures to learn more.
Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar.
Your son or daughter wants to play soccer. Or baseball. Or sign up for dance. Or whatever. Perhaps it’s time to sign them up for swim lessons again. Or summer camps. But oh, what was that website again? And when was the registration deadline? How much did it cost? You’re certain you looked it up last year (you may have even written it down), but you just don’t remember. So, then you find yourself on a digital scavenger hunt to gather all the information you need, which likely hasn’t changed much since the last time you looked it up.
I don’t know about you, but I absolutely hate wasting time. After going through a few cycles of what I just described, I finally decided to stop reinventing the wheel and create a master list of all the activities that I have looked into for my kids. (And now that I have four kids, that list is going to get pretty long in a hurry!!)
Having a comprehensive list of all the things I have already spent time searching for has been incredibly helpful, and today I want to share it with you, so you can simplify your life too! And if you don’t like the template I created, come up with something that suits you better. The point I’m trying to drive home is that creating a list like this will save you so much time and sanity. It’s essential to keeping this part of your mom (or dad) life organized!
The nice thing about saving the information that you’ve gathered is that most of it won’t change by the time you need it again. Even if I end up not signing my child up for a particular activity, I still leave it on my list so it’s there if we ever consider it again in the future. Even if something like the registration deadline changes, you’ll at least have a rough idea of when it’s coming up – say early March or late August, etc.
And knowing how much you’ve paid for it in the past is helpful for planning ahead and budgeting for it. Speaking of planning ahead, it’s also a helpful tool for looking at the year as a whole and planning out your kids’ activities and knowing which seasons overlap or have conflicting practice times.
This master list is helpful for side-by-side comparisons too. You can quickly and easily compare various activities when trying to decide what to sign your child up for, and you can also compare organizations if there’s more than one option for a particular sport or activity.
Admittedly, it does take some time initially to create this list (if you’re looking into multiple activities), but I promise it’s worth the legwork up front when you begin to use the list as a resource later on. And then when you look into something new, you don’t have to start all over, you just add it to your existing list.
Boom!
It’s that simple. Click here to download as a PDF (if you plan to print and handwrite the info) or as an Excel document (if you’re a little OCD and want to type the info – no judgment here). I genuinely hope this little list will make a big difference in your life. Enjoy, and please share! 😉
Leave a Reply