I’m mom to a busy family of six, so when I saw the Skylight Calendar in my Instagram feed my first thought was, “This could change my life.”

Here’s the thing: I have a job. I homeschool my kids and teach class at a co-op. My oldest two kids have jobs. The oldest three kids have extracurricular activities. My youngest has 15+ hours of autism therapy a week. We are busy.

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My family is constantly asking questions like, “What’s going on this afternoon?” or “What are we doing this weekend?” or my (least) favorite: “What’s for dinner?” all this, even though all of our activities are meticulously logged in my iCal app in personalized calendars I’ve shared with each of them. Yet, they never look at them.

I wondered, should I really splurge the Skylight Calendar — or  what’s basically just digital display of all our engagements for the week? Or will we quit using it immediately and regret the purchase?

So when Skylight reached out to offer us a press sample of their popular digital calendar, I jumped at the chance to see if it’s really worth the hype. Especially since we were already familiar with their very popular WiFi Digital Picture frame.

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Setting it up is…pretty easy. The device itself is plug-and-play. Then, you just share your calendar link — it can be iCal, Google, Cozi, Outlook or more — to a custom email address the Skylight device prompts you to set up.

That may sound more complicated than it is. It took me all of 15 minutes to set it up for 6 calendars (and that included a bit of a delay in figuring out that I had to switch my iCal to public mode).

My verdict: This isn’t for everyone. Particularly if you have concerns about privacy or security when it comes to your calendar app, you may want to pass on Skylight since your calendar does need to be set to public — at least in iCal. Also, it’s expensive. Especially compared with just sharing your existing digital calendars, free through your mobile devices.

But all-in-all, I like it very much!

The Skylight Calendar has been a simple, streamlined way for my family to quickly look to see what’s on everyone’s schedule for the day. I think some of the genius here is that it is so simple — it’s just a way to display our digital calendar, in real time, for the whole family to see. We’ve definitely continued to use it week after week, and it’s absolutely worth every penny for big, busy families like mine.

Plus it’s convenient to have it synched on your mobile devices as well.

The 2024 redesign of the mobile app looks beautiful!

Oh, and pro tip:  Add meals as all-day events to your calendar. This way, your family will know what’s for dinner and never have to ask. One less thing for me to worry about.

You can buy the Skylight Calendar through the Skylight Frame website. And be sure to check out the brand new Calendar Plus, which offers even more features.