As a Stay-at-Home Dad of 4 little kids, I can use all the help I can get to make my life easier. One thing I lean on heavily to help me keep it together is my iPhone. With a couple million apps out there in the app store it can be a little daunting to sort through them all.  Over the past several years I have found myself relying heavily on a few apps and I wanted to share those with everyone in hopes that I can help someone out.  The good thing is most of these are free.  

MINTMint has become my go-to app for keeping my family on our budget. We can set goals and budgets and I am able to categorize every transaction we make and see exactly where our money is going. It is an excellent app to get an overview of all your finances, from bank accounts, to credit cards, to loan balances,  to retirement funds. Mint is able to link to any and all of your accounts so you can see them all in one place.

MEALBOARDMealBoard is a phenomenal app that helps with meals and grocery shopping. You are able to plan out your meals for anywhere from 1-4 weeks at a time. Then once your meals are all planned, it will create a shopping list for you from all the ingredients in the meals you planned out. To me, one of the coolest features is the ability to search through over 30 different food websites and import recipes. You can manually enter in any recipes you want as well. This app has truly simplified my life.

ERRANDS TO-DO LISTFrom the honey-do lists, to shopping lists, to the daily chores this is a great app to help me stay on top of everything I need to get done. It is a simple and easy to use list maker. I don’t have much else to say about it other than it sure beats carrying around a bunch of pieces of paper with check lists on them,

WEB ALBUMSI use Google’s Picasa quite frequently. Unfortunately Google doesn’t have their own Picasa App. That’s where Web Albums comes in. This app allows you to easily upload or download pictures and videos to your Picasa albums. It is a great way to share large amounts of pictures with others and a great way to back-up your pictures from your phone. Web Albums allows you to manage more than one Picasa account which can come in handy if you have more than one Google account.

PBS KIDSPBS Kids is a great app to keep the kids busy in situations where I need them to be still and quiet, such as the Drs. office. It’s completely free and has tons of content available for the kids to watch. I don’t use this everyday with the kids, but when I need it, it is worth it’s weight in gold.

WATCH DISNEY JUNIORWATCH Disney Junior is similar to PBS Kids in that I don’t use it everyday but when I need it, it sure is a lifesaver. You are able to watch a bunch of Disney Junior Channel programming, which is certain to keep your kids occupied and out of your hair. Unlike PBS Kids, you have to have a cable subscription to Disney Junior (or a friend with a subscription willing to share his password) because you can only view most things after you have logged in with your cable info.

KEEPER Keeper is awesome to help me remember all the passwords I have in my life. I can put all my log-in info for all of our bills, accounts and websites. I have also put things like my children’s social security numbers in there so I can access them if need be. It seems a little scary at first to have all that info in one spot, but you are able to set a password so no one else can open the app. You can also pay to have them back-up your info if you wish.

PANDORABy now I’m sure you all know about Pandora. There are several other music apps out there (Spotify, Bop, TuneIn, etc.) but I still just prefer Pandora. Whether we are driving in the car, picking up toys, or having a dance party, things just seem better with music.  One of our favorite things to do is called Three Song Clean Up.  I blast some dance music and for three songs we run around the house and pick up and straighten up as quickly as we can, as much as we can for three songs. If we finish before the third song ends then we have a dance party for the remaining time.

THE WEATHER CHANNELThis is no doubt my least sexy choice on this list but it is a must have. When I’m getting the kids dressed I need to know what the weather will be like so I can dress them accordingly. The iPhone has a stock weather app but this one is significantly better in my opinion.

Well there you have it.  My most used Stay-at-Home Dad apps. What apps do you use to help you stay organised and maintain your sanity?