How I Use My Skylight Calendar to Have More Fun

As an Enneagram One, staying organized is fun for me. I love a planner, a list, and a reward system. I have to hold myself back from buying a new planner every quarter even though I’m happy with the one I have. And of course, what could be more fun for the whole family than an organizational tool we all use?

I had my eye on a wall-mounted smart calendar for months before I finally pulled the trigger. I compared a few different options and finally went with the 15-inch Skylight Calendar. I’ve had it for about five months now and can confidently say it was a great investment for our family! This isn’t a sponsored post—I just really love this product and wanted to share about it! Here’s how we’re using it.

Calendar

The most obvious function of the Skylight Calendar is, well, the calendar. The Skylight will sync with several other calendar apps, including Cozi, which is the app I’d finally gotten my husband to commit to using. Skylight also has its own calendar app. I’ve considered making the switch but decided it wasn’t worth it to have to migrate dates from Cozi or convince my husband to try something new.

Being asked the same question over and over is decidedly unfun for me. So I love that my older kids can read the calendar for themselves. My toddler doesn’t really understand the concept yet. But when he can grasp the idea, I think the visual representation of our schedule will be helpful. I can include emojis, so we might experiment with that to help him see what to expect.

Menu Planning

Another unfun question is “what’s for dinner?” The Skylight’s menu planning capability is part of the subscription. You can use the calendar without a subscription, but I decided to give it a try mostly for the menu planning. And I really like it! It took a little getting used to in that you have to add meals to a “recipe box” before you add them to the calendar. But having our regular meals stored in the “recipe box” means I don’t have to remember what we like to eat. I can just click on a date and scroll through our options.

I like to vary my meals with the season, so I’ve been experimenting with adding a seasonal emoji to my seasonal meals. Once I get through a whole year, I’ll be able to see my seasonal meals at a glance. I don’t have meatloaf in my recipe box yet because it’s been too hot for that. But we’ll enjoy it all fall and winter! For recipes that we like to eat all year, like tacos, I’ve added a little calendar emoji.

This isn’t Disney-level fun. But it makes me smile! And it’s cut down on decision fatigue and helped me streamline meal planning. And less time meal planning means more time for fun!

Tasks

Woohoo, chores! Said no kid ever. But my kids do like using the touchscreen to check off their chores from the tasks list. And if they actually complete their whole list, they get a celebratory emoji explosion that makes it a little more fun.

I love that I can assign tasks to a particular person so each kid has their own list. I love that I can set tasks to repeat on a daily or weekly rotation so I don’t have to reset a chart every day. And I love that I can assign one-off tasks as I think of them using the app on my phone. If someone needs to pack for a sleepover or make a birthday card, I can add it so we don’t forget. Eventually, they should be able to keep track of these types of things on their own. But for now, it’s helpful scaffolding!

I also like that I can see the tasks list on my phone so I can check in on whether chores are actually getting done. In general, my girls need to do their chores before they play with friends. So keeping up on their status means I can make sure we’re ready to go have more fun when the opportunity arises!

Lists

I love a list. Apparently my kids do too. We’re up to 12 kids lists on the Skylight (after I cracked down on random usage and deleted some). Existing lists still include “Favorite Colors” and “Emoji.” These aren’t all that helpful—other than I think they had fun making them. But we’ve gotten a lot of use out of other aspects of the list function.

For example, I had each kid make a list of outfits they could wear to school. Sometimes matching is tough—and so is following dress code. This helped them know what outfits were mom- and school-approved. And it helped me keep track of whether they were running low on options.

I also had each kid make a list of things they could do when they were bored. Now, when I hear the inevitable “Mom, I’m borrrrreeeddd” I can tell them to check the list. One kid likes me to use a random number generator to pick an item for her. It’s one extra step, but she usually abides by what the number picks. It’s helped them have more fun and cut down on that annoying habit.

One more list that’s helped us is the “Mama Remember” list. Let me tell you, Mama is trying to remember a lot of things. So I’ve enlisted the kids to help me manage some of this mental load through this list, which I check when I’m doing my weekly planning. This might include things like “Mom, I need new socks” or “You said if I did X, we could do Y.” They love getting to use the screen to add items to the list. And I love that I don’t have to worry about capturing all these stray conversations alone. Plus, sometimes they include cute or silly notes for me to find when I check the list. And that’s fun for everyone.

Rewards

Before we got the Skylight, we had an existing point system with our girls that we were managing with a separate app. The Skylight has a built-in rewards function that we were able to transition to. I like that I can add star rewards from the app and that the girls can check their balance themselves. I think the star rewards can be tied to the task lists, but we handle those separately. We use stars to help encourage good habits and discourage bad ones.

The rewards help us all have more fun too! My middle kid redeemed her stars for a Flour Power cooking class with me this summer. And my oldest kid earned a trip to a local amusement park with her dad. They spent the day riding all the intense roller coasters that wouldn’t be fun for me and had a blast.  

Photos

I mentioned this briefly when I shared about how we bring the fun of a vacation home, but another benefit of the Skylight subscription plan is that it allows the Skylight to function as a photo frame when it’s not in use. I LOVE this feature, and my kids do too. Yes, we’ve added vacation photos. But that’s not my favorite part.

Over the years, we’ve invested in some professional family photos, mostly when we had newborns. A photographer friend also gifted me with some lovely maternity shots. And while we’ve gotten some favorites printed to display in the house, I was never sure what to do with the rest. It seemed a little self-indulgent to plaster them all over the house.

Now, I’ve been able to add all our professional photographs to our Skylight Calendar and enjoy them every day! As you can probably tell, photography isn’t one of my strengths. So these pictures are leaps and bounds better than the snapshots I’m usually taking. We’ve all enjoyed getting to see these beautiful photos much more often than when they were sitting in a file on my computer!   

All in all, I’ve been so happy with my Skylight Calendar. It’s helped us relive fun memories, cut down on repeat questions, and streamlined my menu planning process. Also, you can color code it. Enneagram Ones love a color code.

Have you tried a smart calendar? Do your kids actually use it, or does the shine wear off? How do you display your pictures so you can enjoy them without coming off like a narcissist?  Let me know in the comments—I love hearing from you!

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