Two houses, one calendar
Dec 4th, 2007 by Jill
In addition to our single email address, we’ve also set up a shared online calendar. We use Google Calendar, which lets us use as many color-coded sub-calendars as we like, with individual levels of privacy and editing rights. If seeing all of the calendars becomes too overwhelming, we can check a box to display or hide any of the sub-calendars.
When I log into Google Calendar, I see:
- My personal calendar (dark green; visible to me and G, but only I can edit this calendar)
- The G & Jill household calendar (light green; visible to me, G, Kathy, and both kids): here G & I enter household events that affect the kids lives or that might be helpful for Kathy and the kids when they are at the other house to know about when planning appointments or when looking into schedule changes
- The kids’ calendar (pink; visible to me, G, Kathy, and both kids): here all five of us can enter the kids’ events — birthday parties, school calendar items, music lessons, performances, etc.
- Kathy’s household calendar (taupe; visible to Kathy, me, G and the kids): Kathy enters events that might affect the kids’ lives at her place and that might be helpful for us to know about when planning appointments or looking into possible schedule changes.
Privacy
We select the “do not share this calendar with everyone” option, and instead share our calendars just with each other. (”Sharing the calendar with everyone” would mean making it public on the internet and having our calendar items be searchable through Google — which is a great idea for groups that want members of the public at their events, but not for families.)
For each calendar you create, you can decide who to share it with, whether they can edit it, whether they can share it with others, and whether they can see event details or just busy blocks of time.
RSS
It’s also possible to subscribe to a private RSS feed for changes to any of the calendars. I subscribe to the feed for updates to the kids’ calendar in Google Reader.
In real life
Our shared calendar is a central repository for upcoming events we all know about. I use it as my main calendar, and G and Kathy use it sometimes — often as a secondary calendar. Still, it’s helpful for keeping us all on the same page.
Related posts:
This is a very neat idea and one worth looking into. Schedules are tough, especially when there are lots of people involved. Thanks for sharing the idea…