I was going through some old information this morning on the GTD system (Getting Things Done if you are not familiar with this). This is an interesting system and I like and use parts of it and dislike and eschew other parts of it but like all things organizing it does interest me. It struck me in reading this material how much things have changed in just the past 5 years (the material was from a conference I went to when I was pregnant with Tabby). The systems and tools I used “way back” then are so different from what I use now. Anyhow, like I said, this sort of stuff always intrigues me and I thought I’d share some of my organizational tools, rules and resources and see what you all use.
- GOOGLE CALENDAR Pictured above, Google Calendar is my favorite org tool. I use it all the time. I have a calendar for the kids, one for the whole family, Matt keeps his own, the menu is on there as well as my training calendar, my freelance hours for billing and a separate schedule for my work commitments (that don’t directly affect the family). The fact that it syncs with my Android phone is perhaps its greatest advantage and I use it daily … hourly some days!
- ANDROID 5 years ago, I was rocking a state of the art HTC with Windows Mobile. It got my email but since it wasn’t corporately sanctioned it didn’t connect to our Exchange server and I entered all my appointments, contacts, etc. manually which was a huge pain in the butt. Switching to an Android has been incredible! Having all my data in Google Calendar and Contacts is such a time saver and the synchronization is flawless.
- OUR GROCERIES APP This is another of my favorite tools. It holds all of our lists. Everything from grocery lists (one for Target, one for our organic market, one for Costco) to family to-do lists to packing lists and it syncs together Matt’s phone and mine so if he adds something to the list in the morning and I go by the store on my way home, I know what to get.
- PHOTOS As far as photos go, I’m pretty strict with myself. I won’t let a week elapse before downloading photos off the camera. I delete the duds (immediately), edit what I want (keeping the originals) and upload the best to Flickr. At some point in time, some munificent being (Matt) backs them up to our file server. If I ever get behind, it is so hard to get on top of it again that I dread it. Keeping on top of things is vitally important to my organization.
- BACKUP Speaking of backup, I LOVE Carbonite. For $55/yr you get your computer backed up to the cloud in your network down time. No fuss no muss nothing to remember. It is as easy as backup gets.
- SCAN SNAP I hate paper, so we have all of our personal files on our fileserver scanned via a system called Scan Snap. It’s just a nice little desktop scanner that digitizes what you still get in paper and sends it straight to PDF.
- PAPER When I do have to use paper, I’m pretty particular about it. At the office, I file everything in 3-ring notebooks as opposed to file folders. Those things drive me NUTS. Notebooks = tidy. Tidy=happy. And I also scan anything I don’t need to keep a hard copy of (meeting notes, invoices, etc.)
- TO DO LIST The other paper thing I won’t get rid of (at least not yet) is my work to-do list. I have a narrow notebook where I keep the to-dos going on a daily basis, copying over what remains for tomorrow (or Monday). I would probably keep this on my computer, but the computer I have at work is so slow that it is just more efficient to keep paper. Plus, I do like to doodle in the margins.
- PINTEREST More and more, Pinterest is one of my go-to sources for organizing. I keep lots of recipes there, clipped from all over the web as well as project boards and crafts I want to attempt. Sometimes this probably creates more distractions for me, but they’re distractions I love.
For the many things I’m good at with organization like menu planning and making it to appointments and getting things done at home and work, I’m terrible with many others. I find myself constantly fighting clutter within our home. Too many toys, clothes, DVDs (though we’ve started rectifying this with Amazon Instant Video and Netflix), pieces of kiddo artwork, books (Kindle is helping here again), craft supplies, holiday decorations, kitchen what-nots. I always have a Goodwill basket going and we make regular trips, but it’s hard at the best of times. I currently need to make clean sweeps on just about every room in the house. We talk frequently about buying/building a bigger home. And while certain aspects of that greatly appeal to me, I don’t want to have space for more STUFF. Bigger closets are not likely to be on the agenda.
I am very curious to know what your favorite organizational tricks are!
Google calendar, Pinterest and Grocery app.