Every day, we work too hard, and we barely have enough time to take care of our homes and kids. We understand that you want to do your job well. Whether you are a homemaker or are running a home-based business, staying organized and keeping track of daily and weekly duties is a must. And that’s where Google Sheets can help!
This is a collaborative post
Google Sheets can help busy mums become productive by automating some daily tasks such as planning menus, tracking expenses, creating lists, and so much more!
Meal Planning with Google Sheets
Meal planning is crucial, so you know how many groceries to buy. But this isn’t about sticking to the grocery list; it’s also about keeping tabs on your family’s diet and knowing if they’re not getting their required amount of veggies or protein every single day.
You don’t need another person or app to do all these for you — create a meal plan on Google Sheets and get your entire family to follow it.
Once you’ve decided on your meals for the week or the month, organize your grocery list by aisle. This is a great visual way to ensure that you are buying a balanced amount of nutritional foods.
Tracking Household Expenses
Although it’s a given that your family needs to eat, they also need transportation and other services like healthcare. Expenses for these things aren’t fixed, and you must constantly update them in order to make sure you budget well and stay on track financially.
Create a sheet called “Household Expenses” and use the following column headers:
- Date: The date of the transaction
- Category: Where does this expense go? Groceries or utilities, etc
- Description: What is the purpose of this expense?
- Actual cost
- Budgeted amount: How much budget were you given for this expense? For example, $100 should be enough for groceries each week.
- Remaining amount: How much is remaining after the spending?
You can create a formula that automatically calculates the available cash based on how much was spent and what’s left over in your account. This “Remaining $” column will update as soon as you re-calculate your budgeted amounts!
Highlight Duplicates in Google Sheets
Regardless of how organized you are when you are a busy wife, mother, or entrepreneur, you may inadvertently duplicate content on your documentation. If you have duplicate data in some spreadsheet cells, make use of the highlight duplicates formula.
If you often worry about duplicate content in a document, learn more about using highlight duplicates in Google Sheets to clean it up. This can be helpful if you’re creating a large grocery list and you realize you’ve already added the item a few times.
SUBSTITUTE() to Replace Existing Text
While working on a project or using a copy to start a new document, you may have to go back and replace existing items. Don’t worry; thanks to this Google Sheets formula, you won’t have to do all that replacement by hand .
Formula: SUBSTITUTE(text_to_search, search_for, replace_with, [occurrence_number])
Share Any Sheet with Family
The best part about sharing the sheet for household expenses, scheduling, etc., is that you won’t have to worry about whether your family’s following the rules. The whole thing will be automated, so it’ll be easier for everyone.
To share a sheet, follow these easy steps:
- Simply go to the Right-hand corner of your spreadsheet
- Click the green share button
You can give editing capability to certain family members if you like:
- Go down to the section that says “Get link”
- Click “change”
You will then see the option for different permissions. You can allow the person you send a spreadsheet to to only act as a viewer, leave a comment, or edit content. Either way, you can keep your family or business members informed about schedules or anything you like on these Google Sheets.
The Bottom Line on Google Sheets
A busy mum’s life is full of tasks that require various skills and expertise — from budgeting to time management. Make the most out of Google Sheets by creating a worksheet with specific functions that streamline your activities and make everything more efficient.
Featured image: Photo by Amelia Bartlett on Unsplash
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