Trello Magic: Help for Busy Mums to get Super Organised

Today, in 4 minutes or less, you'll learn:   

1. About the tool Trello and how it can help you. 
2. The seven reasons why I love using Trello .
3. Free and easy-to-use tools are available to relieve you from overwhelm and mama chaos.  

The most significant obstacle to starting my business was finding time in my busy week. I needed to make time in my week if I was ever going to get my business off the ground, so I worked hard to free up time by working smarter and better organising myself.     

I love a good list, and Trello holds them all for me. Trello is a project management tool that can be used in many advanced ways. Its best use for me has been downloading all the tasks and ideas swirling around my head into these excellent to-do lists that are very visual, mobile and easy to use. Here is an example of a Trello board:    

Can you see how great it is for setting up to-do lists? Creating action lists of everything I want to do in Trello enables me to achieve a lot. I stay on top of important things and can multitask a lot better (for example, batch together all the jobs I need to get done when out at the shops). I feel less overwhelmed and can work on everything more efficiently when I see what I need to do.    

I have found Trello to be so amazing for so many reasons.  

#1: Trello holds so much information  

Trello allows you to create boards for many different areas of your life. Within each board, you can create multiple lists. For example, you can create a list for each day of the week on a weekly to-do board. Under each list, you add cards for each task you want to track. These cards are quite sophisticated as you can add checklists, attachments (such as photos), web links, audio files and descriptions. I have saved lots of different images and web clippings to my cards. I love the checklists, too – for example, I have a card for our swimming lessons each Tuesday that contains a checklist of everything we need to take with us.    

#2: You can create lists for EVERYTHING  

I have created boards for all sorts of things: a massive action list for my business, a weekly task schedule for my business, my weekly to-do list, birthdays and Christmas (where each month has a list, and I have added cards for each birthday), kids activity ideas, kids food ideas, household tasks, and goals and dreams for each year. The ways you can use the boards in your own life, too, are endless.   

I still use the calendar on my phone to keep track of upcoming events, birthdays, appointments, etc. At the start of each week, I add whatever is on my calendar for that week to my Trello board and then watch the days of my Trello board for what is happening next.  

Lists can also be moved easily between boards if something becomes more relevant to another space.  

#3: It is pretty, and you can be creative with it  

Cards can be labelled with specific colours. So, for example, I will colour red any housework tasks I need to do. On birthdays that week, I will make the card pink. Tasks my husband is helping with I label green. Any cards related to family food for the week are labelled purple. These coloured labels help me quickly scan what I need to do, separating tasks.   

I also enjoy choosing the wallpaper background for each of my boards. There are so many fun designs already in Trello, or you can add your own. 

#4: It's free!  

It's free! On the free version, you can create up to 10 boards. But I learned a trick: you can create overarching workspaces and then have ten boards per workspace. So, as I started to run out of free boards, I made a workspace for 'Business', 'Personal' and 'My Dreams', which meant I could create up to 30 boards.  

#5: It's mobile!  

Trello can be saved as an App on my phone, which means I can be mobile with it and add/change my task list whenever I need to. As new 'to-do's' pop up during the day, I can keep adding them, too. I can also work on the desktop version at home.  

#6: It's flexible, and I can keep changing it, reflecting my busy mama life!  

I love that I can move the cards around. They are like tiles that can be moved or slotted around within or between lists. The ease of moving cards around is beneficial on my weekly to-do list board. I line the cards up for what I hope to do in a day, but I move them to the next day or later if I don't get to it. So, as things change in my week, I am constantly spinning my cards around the board.  

#7: I get a lot of satisfaction from archiving all the tasks I get done!  

I love archiving completed tasks and checking off items on checklists. It's always a good feeling!   

Despite trying many different diaries, planners, online lists, and calendars, I kept reverting to writing my lists down on paper. That was until I discovered Trello! It is worth checking out as it has helped me become super organised, get a lot done, and save time. It has transformed my productivity as I juggle my busy week with building my online business.