The shared family organizer app that turns chaos into calm: The Life Sorted story

The Life Sorted story started amongst the chaos of my own busy family life.

At the time I was struggling to juggle a job, travel for work, manage my husband (sorry babe, it had to be said!), keep a household running and ferry two very busy kids to an ever-growing list of extra-curricular activities.

You can only imagine… I was hostage in my own household of chaos… teenagers ‘forgetting’ everything… my husband not knowing what was going on or how he could help, and me a frazzled mess on the inside, but pushing on, trying to keep everything – and everyone – together.

As a family we spent so much time and energy discussing and organising our schedules. Sound familiar? I was fed up with the constant miscommunication and saw other families going down the same spiral. I was sick of wasting precious ‘family-time’ trying to organize ‘family time’.

It was at that point, I knew… something had to change.

This sparked an idea for an app that would not only organise my own personal activities but also streamline our hectic family life. I didn’t know it then, but this little app would support me as a mother, wife and business owner and strengthen our relationships forever.

I enlisted my very clever tech-friend (now my awesome business partner), Vince, to embark on this crazy journey with me to build a family organizer app to help families all over the world to wrangle their busy family schedules.

Little did we know that over the next three years as we created the app, there would be many early mornings and late evenings filled with lots of tears, joy and laughter before we finally launched the beta version of Life Sorted on the app stores in December 2017.

I also had no idea that I would be coined Australia’s own Marie Kondo for brain-clutter! This is the story of how my life got sorted and how – with the tap of your finger – you can do the same.

This is the story of Life Sorted.

// THE LIFE SORTED JOURNEY

Life Sorted was born when I realized my trusty old diary (that I adored / couldn’t live without / if it got lost I had heart palpitations kinda love!) just wasn’t cutting it.

It wasn’t helping me communicate with my husband about what was on that week. It wasn’t reminding the kids what they needed to pack for after-school activities so I was having to repeat myself every freaking day! And it wasn’t bringing us together as a family.

It was falling short big-time but after trying spreadsheets, going through my ‘post-it note’ phase and trying every darn paper planner, I realized I needed something more.

That’s when it hit me amidst all this chaos. I was sticking up post-it notes in my wardrobe with chores, appointments, events, shopping lists, and dedicated colours for each family member. This system semi-worked (because the rest of the fam could see it) but it had its flaws because it wasn’t portable. But, maybe a digitised version could work.

It got me thinking…

I tried a few apps but they didn’t do everything I wanted, and I didn’t want MULTIPLE apps – I wanted one place for everyone and everything.

Why not create an app the Jo way?

Life Sorted, the shared family organizer app, was born

Who would have thought, the post-it note system I was using at the time would inspire the basis of Life Sorted? I have worked in tech most of my life, so I knew a thing or two on how to get the ball rolling.

The journey wasn’t easy though… it was a team two (Vince and I) for the first 3 years, which has now grown to a kickass team of seven in 2019.

The trek has been full of tears, doubts, hard work and dedication but I couldn’t be happier finally seeing the work pay off, some four years later. Have you seen my interview on the Today Show?

The Life Sorted app is designed specifically to solve the complexities of a busy family (not just a standard calendar). It is jam-packed with functionality that the whole family can use across all devices (without any annoying ads).

Click here to learn about all the features of the Life Sorted app

// A SHARED FAMILY ORGANIZER FOR FAMILIES ACROSS THE WORLD

In case you didn’t hear me screaming from my office… we recently hit 10k downloads on the app stores which has now quickly escalated to almost 20k!!. From day dot, my mission has always been to help millions of families around the world organise their schedule, stop the stress around scheduling, minimise miscommunication, and cull brain-clutter.

And now thousands of families are relishing more space, energy and time, allowing them to spend more time together doing what is most important – being together in the moment.

I’ll let you in on a little secret… our tech team have been diligently working away on the architecture to support Life Sorted on a global scale.

And it’s almost ready, like really soon. If you’re in another country right now, let’s just say you won’t have to wait long.

But for now we’re hustlin’ every day to get the app to more Aussie and NZ families!

Thank you to everyone for your continued support. If you’d like a 30-day free trial of Life Sorted, click HERE. If you’re already a Life Sorted addict, the best way to show your support is by leaving us a 5-star review on the app store. It would mean the world to us.