As the working mother of four young adult children, staying organized is a constant challenge. Bublup is an amazing app for visually organizing and sharing many different aspects of your hectic life.
Parents can be extremely busy individuals balancing multiple roles in their lives. They’re juggling their own jobs with their children’s schedules, meal planning with running a household, a social life with time to relax, and so much more.
As the working mother of four young adult children, staying organized is a constant challenge. Bublup is an amazing app for visually organizing and sharing many different aspects of your hectic life. Your web links, photos, videos, files, notes, and more can all be saved together in one place. It’s easy to use and has enabled me to stay on top of my game. Not only that, but it makes organization beautiful and fun! There are a million and one reasons why you might use the app, but here are a few of my favorite examples:
- Recipe Planning & Sharing
- Holiday Gift Buying
- Researching Colleges
- Trip Planning
In addition to my own examples, I have included the perspectives of other Bublup users I know who use the app to manage family information in this post.
But first thing’s first. Before you can get your life beautifully organized, let’s cover the basics.
1. Starting a Family – Make a Folder
Create Top-Level Folders
Create folders to save your important information. Your top-level folder should represent how you best organize your life! An example of a folder hierarchy that might work for you is:
- Recipes
- Shopping
- Colleges
- Family Vacations
Create Subfolders
Top-level folders can contain endless subfolders, so that you can organize to your heart’s content. For example:
- Recipes → Dinner
- Must-See Sights → Museums | Walking Tours | Natural Wonders
- Shopping → Holidays 2020
- Colleges → Illinois
- Family Vacations → Aruba 2021
For some help with meal planning via Bublup, be sure to check out this blog!
2. The More the Merrier – Add Content to Your Folders
Once your folders are created, you can populate them with web links, photos, videos, documents, and any other file type. Using “Shopping” as an example, you might want to include:
- Notes with gift ideas or family members’ wishlists
- Links to items you’d like to buy or Black Friday deals
- Photos of gift ideas you’ve seen
There are multiple ways to add items from both desktop and your mobile device.
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- The “+” Button
Anything can be saved by clicking the blue “+” button in the bottom right corner of your folder. Select the file type you wish to upload or paste a web link.
- The “+” Button
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- Drag & Drop
Save anything into your Bublup folders by dragging and dropping from your desktop. Select the file(s) from your desktop that you want to save and then drag and drop them into Bublup. Notice the drop area will be highlighted in green.
- Drag & Drop
- The Built-In Camera
The mobile app offers a built-in camera that automatically saves photos in your folder. When you’re on the go, use it to snap a great gift idea or a dish you want to make at home. However, if you prefer to use your phone’s camera app, you can also save your photos to a Bublup folder with the plus button.
3. Spending Quality Time – Make a Group Folder
Bublup is collaborative, and you can make any folder a group folder so that others can contribute, comment, and react.
Invite others to join the party! Bublup is collaborative, and you can make any folder a group folder so that anyone can contribute, comment, and react. With group folders, you can streamline photos, upcoming trips, and more into one consolidated location versus a mess of emails and texts. By selecting the “invite” icon, you can add others to your folder by email address or username. There are also different permission levels available such as view, add, edit, and invite privileges, so you can set some rules and control exactly who can add what!
4. Save & Share What Matters – Create a Roll
A roll is an instant web page that can be created with the click of a button but looks like it took hours to make. This is a great way to share family photos, recipes, trip recommendations and more.
Take the content you save to the next level by rolling it up into a beautiful, single link that anyone can view. A roll is an instant web page that can be created with the click of a button but looks like it took hours to make. This is a great way to share family photos, recipes, trip recommendations, and more. Rolls are super customizable. Some options to think about are:
- Text edits for titles and descriptions
- Choosing a focal point or “Set Key Area” for certain photos so that they display exactly how you want.
- Pick a theme that represents your content in a visually appealing way.
To learn more about Bublup rolls, including how to customize your roll theme, add a pretty roll URL, and password-protect your roll, watch this Roll Tutorial Video.
Now that you know how to get started, here are some helpful ways Bublup has helped myself and others get a handle on my busy life as a parent!
Recipe Planning & Sharing:
Before Bublup, I had an entire bookcase of cookbooks and folders of printed recipes that I had printed from the internet or traded with friends and family throughout the years. To make them accessible to everyone, I created a group recipes folder to replace my physical file system.
Thankfully, I love to cook! Before Bublup, I had an entire bookcase of cookbooks and folders of paper recipes that I had printed from the internet or traded with friends and family throughout the years. To make them accessible to everyone, I created a group recipes folder to replace my physical file system. My group collects and shares recipes organized by themes (keto, air fryer, holidays, etc.), and the folder acts like a “cooking social club” complete with annotations, reactions, recipe modifications, tips, and menu recommendations. We enjoy taking and saving photos of our work, which is a fun way to make our meals a creative, shared experience. This folder has had particular significance this year throughout the pandemic. Our group expanded to include additional friends and inspired members who previously had little kitchen experience to become proficient cooks.
Holiday Gift Buying:
We use Bublup to build our holiday “wish lists”. It makes shopping a breeze! Each of us has a folder that we fill with gift items, including “click to buy” links. The group folder functionality allows everyone to share their content, including our out of town grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We choose a theme each year and enjoy selecting cover art for our folders (shows and movies like Seinfeld and Dirty Dancing characters). It has become a fun part of our holiday traditions.
Researching Colleges:
Bublup has been invaluable as a portal for organizing our college searches. We save links for our target schools, school ranking articles, websites that allow you to enter your GPA/SAT score that tell you your chances of admission, financial aid information portals, etc. We also have folders for our campus visits complete with our appointment email confirmations, airline/hotel/ rental car details, outside local attractions, etc. Having everything in one place has significantly helped us organize this overwhelming chapter in our lives!
Trip Planning:
During our trip planning, everyone added the sites they were interested in visiting in the UK and France. We included the logistical details (airline/train tickets, etc.), our travel schedule, and packing lists.
We also use Bublup for planning our family vacations, including our trip last summer to Normandy for the anniversary of D-day. During our trip planning, everyone added the sites they were interested in visiting in the UK and France. We included the logistical details (airline/train tickets, etc.), our travel schedule, and packing lists. During our trip, we created a photo folder to collect our images and videos in a central, shared location. When we returned home, we built a vacation Bublup roll that we shared with our family and friends.
Preserving Memories:
One family I spoke to has younger kids, and created subfolders for each kid’s report cards, medical records, soccer videos, karate and dance performances, piano recitals, and art brought home from school. Whatever your family is into, you can create a folder for it. But creating folders isn’t just for saving memories, it can also store all the bookmarks you may need – like that link to the schedule for this year’s soccer season!
Photo Sharing:
New parents sometimes have very active Bublup folders for that small circle of family members who enjoy a ton of photos (in lieu of oversharing on social media and driving everyone crazy!). But for this group, there is no concept of ’too much’. Keep in mind that reactions and comments flow in from grandparents and cousins regularly, so if it becomes overwhelming, be sure to set your notifications!
Hopefully this guide helps to streamline and simplify your busy life as a parent! If you have any questions or feedback about Bublup, feel free to reach out at info@bublup.com.
About the author
Susan Walsh is the working mother of 4 children and 2 dogs who lives in a wonderful world of managed chaos. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, cooking, traveling, and mindfulness.
