For school, many students receive special planners to fill in where they need to go, special events and daily assignments. As we get older, many adults leave the planners behind, but for active families, a planner can be a lifesaver.

Scenario 1: It’s Wednesday morning and you have a feeling one of your kids has an activity today, but you can’t remember which one – until 30 minutes after they were supposed to be there.

Scenario 2: Your child asks if they can sign up for a one-day activity and you say yes. Later, you realize they are now double booked and one activity will have to be cancelled or rescheduled.

Scenario 3: You agree to bring napkins to an open house. You don’t write it down because you are sure you’ll remember it. An hour later, you have no idea what you were sure you’d remember – only that it was something.

If any of these sound familiar, it might be time to set up some sort of planner, especially with the new school year fast approaching. With standard times for school and school activities and an increase in extracurricular activities, it can be the perfect time to sit down and make a plan for how to move forward.

Choosing a type of planner, however, can be overwhelming. A planner can range from a monthly wall calendar you update regularly, to a color-coded multi-tab portfolio that tracks everything from daily activities to long-term goals.

Here are five main types of organizers:

Monthly Home Calendar: Whether this calendar is on the wall in your kitchen or on a desk in a home office, this is the tried-and-true method to track important dates and activities. Calendars are visual and family members can easily check a specific day for softball games or what’s for dinner. Events can be added months in advance. The main drawback is you have to be home in order to update the calendar or see what is on it.

Online Calendar: Chances are your email or your cell phone has a built-in online calendar that can be shared and viewed in real-time. These calendars can be color-coded by activity or family member so you know who needs to be where when and you can share events with family or friends. An online calendar gives you the benefits of being able to add in travel time, send directions directly to your GPS, link to a website and have overlapping events. When an online calendar is updated, everyone sees the change.

Online Planner: Multiple apps and websites are available to help you take your calendar a step further and add items like shopping lists, directions or chores. These planners can be customized. Like online calendars, having an online planner means the information can be shared with others in real-time and may be able to be accessed on different devices. But having a high-tech planner isn’t for everyone and can make it harder to see the big picture than using a physical planner.

Physical Planner: As with online planners, you can find any number of paper products to fit your needs. Many planners come with calendars, space for to-do lists, stickers and many kinds of trackers. You can find planners that are organized in different ways, that have different themes and aesthetics – you can even find academic planners designed specifically for the parents of active students. Although a paper planner is not instantly updated or shared, setting a time to sit down and update it every day can have additional calming or stress-reducing benefits.

Physical Notebook: For anyone who has trouble finding the right fit in a paper planner, you might try starting with just a simple notebook. Moleskin notebooks with lined or dotted pages are commonly used as planners and items like a Bullet Journal or keeping a diary alongside your planning needs. If you find you want to track more or less than a pre-set planner, a blank notebook may be the right option.

Whichever planning method you chose this school year, don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work out immediately. You may need to test drive a few planning methods to find the one that best fits your needs. But taking the time to plan could have long-term benefits, especially when you have that nagging feeling something is supposed to be happening and you have a reference to see that it was piano lessons – and you can still make it on time.

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Jennifer Colton is a communications specialist for the City of Pendleton and mother of three.

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