Whether you love or hate technology, we can’t deny the fact that it can certainly make life easier. And for us busy parents (and our busy kids), there are some amazing tools and services (both free and paid) that can really help us run the house more efficiently.

Without further ado, here are 25 tools, products, services, downloads, and freebies that will help you do what you really want to do – have time to play with your family!

Household Help

1. Thunderbird Grocery List Generator – Free Thunderbird Add-On
   The GLG (Grocery List Generator) is a helpful little tool to store your recipe-ingredients and other groceries you need regularly. It creates a well-organized grocery list to help make your grocery shopping as easy as possible.
2. Amazon Grocery – New “Subscribe & Save” Program
   Amazon has a new subscription service for non-perishable groceries, in which you can have an ongoing order of your regular products delivered for free and for a discount on a monthly basis (or whatever schedule you would like).
3. Sittercity.com – Find a Babysitter, Nanny, Petsitter or Housesitter
   The largest sitter-matching site, offering sitters with background checks and parents’ sitter ratings. (US only)
4. Pet Management – From Download.com
   This can help pet owners with many of the responsibilities that go along with owning a pet. It helps you organize pet records, reminds you of vaccinations and important dates, and prints many useful pages such as pet sitter instructions, greeting cards, missing posters
5. DoMyStuff.com – Outsource the Crappy Stuff
   Chores, errands, anything on your to-do list that can be done by someone else can be posted on this site. Assistants bid on projects and they offer an escrow service to facilitate payment. Free to post tasks and bid on projects.

Family Communications

1. Voicemail Bling
   Vonage offers free email delivery of voicemails with their regular plans, or
   GotVoice offers the same plus voicemail blasts to multiple numbers, plus text messaging via cell or desktop widgets.
2. Earth Class Mail – Snail Mail Delivered via Email
   View scanned images of your sealed envelopes online, and with a few mouse clicks have your mail securely scanned into a PDF document, recycled, shredded or mailed to you or someone else. I’m terrible with paper – this is a dream for every filing-challenged parent like me!

Scheduling & Organization

1. Amy Knapp’s Family Organizer – Home Day Planner
   A fairly inexpensive daily organizer for the at-home parent, with several other products to help all family members stay organized.
2. MomAgenda – Mom Organizer
   They sell pretty and sleek day planners for moms with a free downloadable program to create and print your own pages.
3. Household Notebook – Free Downloadable Planner
   A free semi-comparable version of the above planners.
4. Custody Tool/Scheduler – from Download.com
   Whether you’re in a difficult custody battle or a harmonious custody sharing situation, Custody Toolbox can help. It features a color-coded calendar, a searchable journal, a child info database, an address book with birthday and anniversary reminders, and password protection. The latest version has a schedule wizard, computes parenting time percentages, and multiple daily categorized searchable journal entries.
5. HomeWise Software – from Download.com
   HOMEwise is the most comprehensive yet easy-to-use home and family organizer and personal assistant on the market. HOMEwise includes over 170 features and functions including home inventory, garden and building project planners and trackers, bank account records, ‘to-do’ lists, personal collection databases, calendars, phone books, diaries, shopping lists, recipes, snack and meal planners, and travel planners and organizer.

Parent Helpers

1. ChipIn – Online Fundraising
   Help to collect money for a personal cause, group purchase, or fundraiser using your own custom ChipIn page. They also have blog and Facebook widgets to promote and track money raised.
2. Pregnancy Calendar – from Download.com
   A pregnancy calendar program that keeps the mother-to-be aware with a week-by-week information about every change happens in her body and for his baby. Tips are put there for every week for the mother’s health.
3. Ovulation Calendar – from Download.com
   Calculates fertility period based on menstrual cycle and luteal phase. Also predicts highest probability of conceiving a boy or a girl (don’t ask me how – I have no clue).

Shopping Helpers

1. Upromise.com – Rewards Program
   A free rewards service for eligible purchases on groceries, gasoline, online shopping, etc. at over 40,000 participating retail stores and services. A percentage of every purchase goes into a college savings account.
2. iKobo.com – Prepaid Debit Cards
   Help kids learn to spend on credit or give them a protected way to carry larger amounts of money.
3. BabyToBee.com – Free Baby Stuff
   Take advantage of the fact that you are one of the most coveted demographics on the planet – marketers fall over themselves for new parents and give away free stuff all of the time to you!

Educational Tools, Downloads and Services

1. Tutor.com – On Demand Tutoring
   7 days a week during after-school hours, Tutor.com offers live tutors on call to help kids with homework from 4th – 12th grades. You can try it out for $5 and purchase a subscription or pay-as-you-go. And they also hire work at home parents to do the tutoring (*bonus*)!
2. School Organizer – from Download.com
   Helps kids organize everyday life with an automatic school schedule, event and task calendar, sticky notes, sound reminders, and friend’s information.
3. SmartBaby Flashcards – from Download.com
   This flash cards program helps teach infants, toddlers, and preschoolers so that they have enhanced reading abilities, in speed and comprehension.
4. Kid Browser – from Download.com
   Kid-safe Internet browser made just for kids. Designed to be simple for parents to install and to use. Protects children from pornography and Internet predators. Uses a white-list technology so parents can decide what is suitable for their children and what isn’t.
5. Kids Chore Chart/Point system – from Download.com
   Point System – Your teenagers have to earn points in order to gain privileges. There is also a consequence section to subtract points if you chose to do so.
   MyRewardBoard – Geared toward younger kids with reward coupons, fun animations and achievement certificates; this unique program turns chores and goals into fun and games.
6. Toddler Keys – from Download.com
   This is a useful tool for parents that allows you to lock your computer keyboard, CD drive doors, and power-off button. When the keyboard is used it will display images and play sounds every time a key is pressed, thereby preventing access to the desktop and applications.
7. Family Bank – from Download.com
   Kid’s allowance program. Teaches children to spend wisely, save regularly and avoid debt. Includes auto-deposit, savings, loans and chores modules. Register tracks spending and displays pie charts.