When Mom Central asked if I wanted to be more organized this year, I laughed. Don’t I always want to be more organized? Don’t I always fail? Don’t I always buy new planners… and then lose them? Still, I agreed that, yes, I do want to be more organized and offered to review Cozi.

What’s Cozi?

It’s an online calendar/scheduling system. Before you balk and say, “I like my iCal or Google Calendar or what have you better,” read through this review.

First of all, it’s easy to use and fast loading. This is imperative when you figure in the point that Cozi is meant to be used by the whole family. I’m not saying that FireDad is dumb when it comes to technology. But when you factor in that I also (purposefully) invited my mother and mother-in-law to use the service as well, ease of use and fast loading are, by far, the most important things. Why did I invite them? My husband’s mother never remembers his work schedule and my mother never remembers when we have plans elsewhere. The hope was that they would be able to quickly look without calling me during TheBrothers’ bedtime. It’s still my hope. Hasn’t happened yet. Hmm.

Anyway, other things that I love:

1. Shopping lists & recipes. I do my meal planning two weeks at a time, pulling most of my recipe ideas from online sources. Having a handy listing option right at my fingertips is totally right up my alley.

Cozi Groceries Screenshot

2. The downloads section. First of all: Syncing Cozi with Outlook. That’s perfect for our family (my mother included). They also have the ability to put a widget on your desktop so you can always look and see what’s coming up next. Also perfect for when I don’t know what’s coming next and don’t have time to pull up an entire website.

Something I did not like: there was no warning that by editing the info page with our cell phone numbers that we would receive a text message. We do not have unlimited texting. And, in fact, as my husband receives his cell phone plan through his (fire department) employer, he has absolutely no texting. He now has to pay for the one text message received and then one he had to send to turn off future text messages. I am now down two on my very, very limited plan. I didn’t know that by simply entering our cell phone numbers we would receive texts. I thought that was an option you could turn on, not an automatic function. I was really unhappy when all of that happened.

Despite that minor annoyance, we’re enjoying our use of Cozi. I’ve been able to make marks on each of BigBrother’s school days as to what need to be done (book order turned in, tuition due and so on). It’s big enough to read notes (important for the grandmas). It makes it easier for my family to stay connected. And it looks rather snazzy as well. Because, yes, I judge websites based on what they look like. You don’t?

We’ll be implementing Cozi into our family life this year. Will you?