How I Use My Cell Phone Alarm for Daily Reminders

I’ve always been a note writer.  

Index cards and sticky notes have been my friend for years.  And they still are!  Seems I remember things best when I write them down.

And I use a calendar, too.  While I occasionally record things on my phone calendar, I still have a deep appreciation for old fashioned paper calendars, too, and I keep track of scheduled events and appointments best that way.

But what about smaller daily tasks?  Sometimes there are things I need to remember, but they aren’t necessarily significant enough for my calendar.  And while I often write these things down, it’s easy to get busy and forget the notes I’ve written for myself!

My cell phone alarm is really helping with that.

It’s something I’ve been doing a lot lately, and it’s been a great mechanism for helping me keep track of certain tasks I mean to accomplish during the day.  In this post I wrote for Hip Homeschool Moms about a nighttime routine, I talked about how each night I write down tasks for the next day.  I still do that pretty religiously, but now I often add an alarm on my phone as well.  It’s helping me so much not to forget certain things that need to be done, especially when they need to be done by a certain time.  

And so at night, (and often early in the morning, too,) I set alarms for myself and give them names.  Depending on your clock/alarm app, you may be able to add more specific notes as well.  Personally, I try to keep this simple.  Here are some examples of what you might find among my alarms for each day, including some reasons why the alarms are so helpful to me:

7:00 a.m. — Trash Day  (I hate when we miss trash pickup!  We have animals around and, depending what we have in our bags and cans, setting garbage out by the street the night before isn’t always a good idea.  But it’s easy to forget it in the morning!  An alarm helps with that.)

9:00 a.m. — Make Dentist Appointment (Because the office opens at 9:00 and if I wait much later to call, I’m liable to get too busy to do it at all.)

10:00 a.m. — Get Roast in the Slow Cooker (We eat supper later than most people, but that means I can’t put food in the Crock Pot first thing in the morning unless I want mush for dinner!  If I’m using a slow cooker, a mid or late morning start is better, but, especially during the school year, mid and late mornings get busy and sometimes I need a little reminder.)

11:00 a.m. — Return or Renew Library Books (I am notorious for forgetting to return my library loans and then racking up fines.  Moving to a new town with a different library system and a totally different loan/return schedule didn’t help me either!  This is one of the few alarms I will set a couple weeks out, just to remind me to renew or return what I’ve borrowed.)

1:00 p.m. — Make that Call (You know those phone calls you find yourself dreading like the plague, like the complicated call to the insurance company, or the one about the strange charge on the cell phone bill?  Maybe even the difficult personal call?  Yeah, I have those, too, and sometimes an alarm provides a gentle reminder that it’s time to do it and have it done with.)

4:00 p.m. — Pick Up Groceries (I shop for my groceries online — oh, how I need to blog about the beauties of that! — and just go pick them up.  I get a text reminder from the local grocery store, which is awesome, but I usually try to combine other errands with my grocery pick up.  Depending on what other stops I need to make, an alarm is a gentle reminder to leave the house in time to get my other errands done so I can pick up my groceries on the way home.)

 

Some days I have several alarms.  Some days I have none!  It all depends on the busyness of my day.  Adding and saving an alarm takes seconds, but it can save me time, money, and sometimes even embarrassment, just by reminding me of little things that might get lost in the hustle and bustle of my day! 

For me, it’s about recognizing my weaknesses and my busy daily to-do list.  I need help keeping track of it all sometimes!  And one of the simplest features of my phone — my alarm clock — has become one of my biggest helps.