Carpooling? There’s an App for That

This post is on a shared calendar carpool app called the Cozi Family Organizer ~ a total and complete life saver for me this school year because 2 kids + 2 different schools + 4 different drop off and pick up times = a whole lot of chauffeuring.

So myself and two neighbors got smart and decided to organize an official carpool schedule of who could do what “leg” of the drop offs and pick ups for the week. What was simple in concept turned out to be not so simple to keep track of. One mom doesn’t have a car to fit everyone (there are four carpooling kiddos), so some days she takes three kids, some days two and the other mom takes one or two.  To make things more complicated, some girls go straight to gymnastics some days, the others home.

This is not even accounting for the days when you have last minute changes like, “grandma is actually going to pick up Emma today, she doesn’t need a ride home” sort of thing.

It gave me a headache and I wondered how we were going to keep it all straight? Then I thought, they MUST make shared calendar carpool apps, right?

I soon discovered carpooling apps definitely exist, but finding one that met our needs was a little more challenging.

First off, I needed an app where at least three moms could all share the same “live” calendar to stay up to date with the latest.

Secondly, I needed an app where I could enter more than one person’s name for any given leg, since some days there are two moms driving to drop off or pick up.

I finally found her, the best carpool app and my new best friend Cozi.

It is actually meant to be a shared family calendar, but the three of us use it like a little carpooling family.

Every person is color coded, you can see a description of what kids are riding in what leg and who is driving, you can view by the day or week. It’s awesome.

The app is FREE, but we ended up splitting the $29.99 yearly upgrade fee to get Cozi Gold. Having this app ad-free alone is worth $30/year along with the monthly view, but the most important feature of Cozi Gold is the “alert feature.“

That means when I go into Cozi to take my daughter off of pick-up because grandma is getting her, I can click to “Alert” whomever I select and they will get an email notification of the change. Brilliant.

No emailing or texting changes, they are all made directly in the calendar!!!!  I LOVE IT.

So if you are a carpooling mom, cozy up to Cozi. You will heart it as much as I do.