Life Well-Lived: Organizational Resources

What are your favorite resources (Products, Apps, Books, Websites, etc.) to help you get organized?

Get yourself a calendar and use it. I’ve fully embraced the digital age but I used to carry a student-planner-sized calendar that was my spiral-bound brain. I’m visual so I used lots of colored pens to categorize goings-ons. I’m a full-on Microsoft girl. I love all my Office products and Outlook is my go-to calendar which I have set up to sync seamlessly and wirelessly to my phone and an online Hotmail calendar (just in case I don’t have my computer or my phone…almost never). Since not everyone has a Microsoft, geeky, software developer for a hubby, I highly recommend Google’s suite of products (all free) which also includes a pretty awesome calendar. You may also fall in love with Cozi. I wanted to but Microsoft is holding me hostage as only a great almost-monopoly can.
Write it down! I’ve blogged before about Microsoft’s OneNote. While it’s available for free, some prefer to use the designed-to-be-free Evernote. Since my OneNote notebooks are synced to the “cloud,” I can access them from all my computers and my phone. I even write my grocery list here. I type it as I’m searching for recipes on my desktop and then get to the store and pull it up on my phone…VOILA! I’ve even taken to jotting down my favorite websites or websites I think I’ll need eventually on OneNote instead of bookmarks because of OneNote’s searchability.
Use a timer. I’m famous for giving my kids “5 more minutes” only to stay around and talk for 50 more. I also forget clothes in the wash or food in the microwave. I’ve even <gasp> forgotten to pick the kids up at school. I started setting my timer or alarm on my watch for everything! I’m in love with Timex’s Ironman watch. I go through about one a year. Over the years I’ve learned they don’t like hot tubs or hitting the water at 40 mph when you fall off a jet ski.
Use your kids for chores. My kids help out a lot because I hate chores with a passion. We love MyJobChart. We even used it to assign schoolwork last year. It’s free, cute, motivating, customizeable…if only it actually vacuumed.
Goodwill (or any other local charity that will accept your junk). I had a major revelation this year that all those cutsie organizational peeps with perfect sock drawers can do it because they only keep 12 pairs of socks. I have to admit I have a ridiculous sock collection for a chick who wears flip-flops 8 months out of the year. Make Goodwill a weekly stop and you’ll be amazed how organized you can actually feel.