Organizing your personal life with Evernote

Note: I love using Evernote so much, and am so convinced of its ability to organize just about any kind of information, that I recently became an Evernote Certified Consultant.  Check out my services in this area and my special offer for new Evernote clients here!
Evernote, the amazing app and note-taking tool, has enhanced my productivity in many ways. While I do use Evernote extensively for business organizing, one of the qualities that make it so appealing is the ability to use it to get and stay organized in almost every facet of your personal life. Here are just three of the many ways I use Evernote at home:

Recipes

This is one of the most popular uses for Evernote, and also one of the main ways that I use it. When I try an online recipe and love it, I clip it using the Evernote Web Clipper and put it in an Evernote Notebook labeled Recipes.  I then tag it with the kind of meal it is (dinner, lunch, brunch, snack, etc.) so I can find it quickly if I am looking for ideas.  Evernote’s search capability is so strong that you can just type in the word “chicken” and every recipe you have saved that includes the word “chicken” will show up. In addition, I have scanned all of my favorite written recipes into Evernote using my Fujitsu ScanSnap. That way, I can easily access them on my Evernote iPhone or iPad app if I am cooking away from home or I want to share them with a friend. I have shared my entire Recipes Notebook with my two sisters so that they can access much-loved family recipes that are stored there.

Travel

When planning a trip, I create an Evernote Notebook with the name of the trip (e.g. Italy 20xx). I then use the Web Clipper to save any and all information about the trip – including tours, sights I want to see, etc. – directly to that Notebook.  I also use the Evernote email-forwarding feature to send all my reservation confirmations from airlines, hotels, and tours to this Notebook.  Any paper information that I get for the trip is scanned directly into the Notebook, so that I have less to carry with me on the trip, and no risk of losing it.

If you get the Evernote Premium membership, you’ll also have offline access to all of your information. That way, while you’re flying over to Italy or hanging out at a cafe in the middle of Rome, you can review your plans or read up on the next sight to see, without needing access to wifi – or lugging a book along! I also hang onto these Notebooks as references for future trips.

Family History

My late father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer who served over 35 years in a variety of countries, all of which had fascinating cultural and political profiles. A prolific letter writer, he wrote at least once a week for most of his life to his mother, stepfather, or brother, detailing his life (and later, our lives) overseas and discussing world events taking place at the time. The amazing thing was that he not only typed all of his letters but also made carbon copies (click here if you’re too young to know what those are) and thus had a copy of every letter he sent!

After my father passed away, we found a bunch of file folders full of these carbon copies, and I decided to scan them into Evernote and put them in a Notebook that I shared with my mother and sisters. We now can read all of these letters and remember (and relive!) our amazing lives abroad, along with my father’s reactions to such events as the Iranian hostage crisis and more. These are now family treasures that are all the more valuable for not being hidden away in a file cabinet in somebody’s basement.

These are just a few of the many ways in which Evernote has enhanced (and helped me organize!) my personal life. I love teaching my clients how to use Evernote and then seeing all the new applications they come up with for it. Once you become an Evernote user, you’ll find there’s no end to the ways it can be used to enrich all aspects of your life!