Have you ever noticed how Moms seem to LOVE to plan? I remember the first time I went to a planning meeting for one of my secular social groups. All of the women came prepared...except for me. They pulled out their fancy Erin Condren planners, while I stumbled around looking for a forgotten piece of paper in my purse. It was in that moment that I realized this is a thing...many women love to plan! We love our planners and our vision boards, our command centers and our schedules. Simply put, mothers are often the masters of efficiency...let's face it...we have a lot of things to juggle!
In the past, our moms group would plan our events the month before they would occur. The problem was that we were getting stressed out (or at least I was) because we didn't have a lot of time to advertise or prepare for our events. It seemed that as soon as one event was finished, we were scrambling to put together the next one. It was also taking up too much time. As much as we all love and need our mom groups, we must never lose sight of our primary vocation as mothers. This year, we have decided to try something different!
Drum roll.....enter the planning meeting!
My dear friend Pam has the most beautiful heart for hospitality. She invited our planning committee over to her house on a Friday night. She had wine and hors d'oeuvres set out for us...our planning meeting became a fun night out with friends!
Before the Planning Meeting:
1) Ask your members for ideas for Bible Studies, Moms Night Out, Children's Activities, etc.
2) Prepare an agenda:
-Our agenda included: Bible Studies, Children's Adoration, Mom's Night Out, Children's playdates, etc.
-Include ideas/feedback you have received to help with brainstorming.
3) Prepare a Master Calendar
-We wanted to prevent any scheduling conflicts for our events, so we created a master calendar.
-I went to https://www.calendarlabs.com/make-word-calendar/monthly-04/ to create
our calendar. Calendar labs allows you to add your own events, include important
Christian days, and also include a section on the side to write notes.
-We included the school calendars for the public and private schools in the area. We also
included any major church events such as retreats, parish mission, and sacrament dates.
-We included what the Church has dedicated each month to. This can be viewed here https://catholicgentleman.com/2015/02/sanctifying-time-the-catholic-meaning-of-days-and-months/
-I also added any feast days that were especially important to our group.
-Everything was color coordinated....church events were blue, school events were red, etc.
During the Meeting:
-We each had our calendars and a copy of the agenda. We tried to plan our events based upon the liturgical themes of the month. We set dates for all of our events for the year. Now, instead of us scrambling, we have saved ourselves a lot of stress and headache. We know what our year looks like and can plan accordingly.
So, how about you? What does your group do to stay organized or to help make planning easier? Let us know!
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