Lauren B. Lentini

(Note: I am not affiliated with Cozi in any way. I would absolutely take a free subscription if offered, but that’s not why I wrote this. I wrote it because I’m a geek. And I really like this app.)

I don’t remember where I heard of Cozi. It was probably one of those listicles–“30 thousand apps you can’t live without as a new parent.” In reality, I’ve found two apps I can’t live without as a new mom: BabyConnect, which we used religiously for the first months to track Jordan’s every bottle, bath, and bowel movement; and Cozi, which keeps track of just about everything else. The common feature between them is sharing information.

Cozi (“Family life. Simplified.”) comes with a shared calendar, shopping and to-do lists, and recipes, among other stuff. I downloaded it for the calendar. I love using the lists. And the recipe box made Christmas happen. So here’s my own listicle, just for fun: 5 ways Cozi saved Christmas.

1. Holiday cards

My phone rang right before I was about to leave for the office holiday party. It was the photographer I’d contacted online over a week earlier. I’d all but given up on doing Christmas cards this year. I pulled up my Cozi calendar to check for conflicts, booked a session, put it into Cozi, and notified Jerald of the new event. Cozi’s calendar is color-coded by family member, you can choose who’s going to each event, and you can send a notification when you create a new event. Brilliant!

Once we finally had photos, we had to figure out where to send them. I sent out a plea for addresses on Facebook, because who knows where all the ones I’ve collected all over the years have gone. As addresses came in, I put them on a shared to-do list in Cozi. As I thought of people we had to send cards to, I added them to the list. I badgered Jerald to find addresses, and he filled in the list from his copy of the app. As I addressed envelopes, I checked them off the list. Cozi has a premium contacts feature that would have made this even easier. I’m thinking of upgrading just so I can save all the addresses for next year.

2. Christmas food

Cozi comes with a bunch of recipes from various sources built in, but I’ve fallen in love with how I can just add my own recipes from any URL. Food blogs are great, but they’re so frustrating when you’re actually trying to make something–all that loading and then scrolling past 10 million photos and stories about the blogger’s childhood. Cozi takes a food blog link and magically strips all of that out, leaving one photo, the description, ingredients and instructions in a consistent format, and a link back to the source. I uploaded a bunch of recipes from a Delish listicle and shared them with Jerald to decide what to make.

Once we’d finalized a menu, I added all the ingredients for the recipes to a special Christmas grocery list with Cozi’s other magical button: add to shopping list. It puts the recipe name as a header to keep everything organized, too. We may have gone to four grocery stores, but we managed to get everything in one trip. When I had to stay in the car and feed the baby for store #4, Jerald already had the list.

3. The ultimate to-do list

By Saturday night, we had a house full of food and I was itching to get started, but I didn’t want to get too far ahead of myself. So I made another list in Cozi. I added headers for each day and put all my cooking and cleaning tasks on it. All my gift-buying and -wrapping was already done, thanks to other lists I made in Cozi. I’ve used a lot of to-do list apps in my day, and this one keeps it simple and really works. It helps that it’s right next to my calendar and all my recipes, too. I may have had the app open on my iPad and my iPhone at the same time at one point…I don’t have a problem, really.

4. Christmas Day cooking

Even the best app can’t prevent a little Christmas morning stress when you’re hosting a bunch of people that afternoon. Cozi helped keep it to a minimum, though. I was switching back and forth between recipes like crazy, and I loved having them preloaded and consistently formatted. (This was a little more difficult because I was using the to-do list feature instead of the meal-planner feature. There were links in my calendar to each of the recipes I was planning to make, but since I was using the to-do list I relied on putting asterisks in the names of the ones I needed, which bumped them to the top of the alphabetical list.) Another magical button Cozi has is “keep screen on,” which is genius. Who needs to worry about unlocking your screen every five seconds when you’re elbow-deep in cream cheese?

“Oh, I completely forgot about the crudités,” my husband says. I didn’t, because I put every last dish on my to-do list. We made too much food, of course, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. None of the new recipes I tried was a complete disaster, and some were pretty damn good. And hopefully we’ll have enough leftovers to last until new year’s.

5. And a happy new year

Now that Jordan’s first Christmas is on the books and the year is racing to a close, I’m looking forward to what 2019 brings. And I’m thinking of ways Cozi can help. I want to eat better and start cooking dinner more, so I’m going to load a bunch of healthy recipes into Cozi and start using the meal-planner feature. We’re going to see To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway in January (merry Christmas to me!), so of course I put that on the Cozi calendar. I’m always looking for ways to share more Jordan stories, so I’m considering using Cozi’s journal feature to start a monthly newsletter. Or just using its list feature to keep track of blog ideas.

If it’s not already clear, I would absolutely recommend this app to anyone with play rehearsals and soccer games to coordinate, or a holiday to host. It’s incredibly robust for a free app, even an ad-supported one. I’m strongly considering upgrading to the Gold version the next time they discount it, mostly to compensate the makers of this beautifully designed system. Every time I wrote “magical” in this review, I really meant “thanks to hard-working developers.” And the premium features don’t look half bad, either.

If you came here looking for stories of how Jordan’s first Christmas went, I’m sorry I disappointed you. I hope you’ll settle for my favorite picture.