At times, things in your life can be overwhelming — especially if you have something big coming up at home, like planning a party, going on a trip or even a simple but complicated task of cleaning and reorganizing the house. It may be causing you a lot of stress and worry to think about all the things that you have to plan out and the numerous details and steps required to get the job done. But you don’t have to suffer because there is one (free) tool that can really make it easier for you to get a grip on the full list of tasks, organize any documents together that you need and just keep you on top of everything: Evernote.

In every project that we do at home, we almost always turn to magazines, books and even the internet to gather ideas. Instead of using Pinterest, your email and printing things out, you can just create a digital Notebook in your Evernote account and use Clearly and Web Clipper to condense everything in one place. This way, you only have to go to one place to piece everything together and not have to flip the pages of your magazines and books back and forth or keep searching the internet on what you already have found. Not only do you save time for planning, but effort as well. Ideas you get from books and magazines can easily be scanned and saved into your Evernote notebook and it is just as easy to save ideas off of the Internet as well.

Here are several ways to make Evernote useful when planning big projects at home:

  • Traveling for a vacation with the family can be considered a major household project, especially when you have a big family. But if you use Evernote to to organize your travel plans, you can arrive much more relaxed. Create a packing list with check boxes for every item you need to pack. Include sub-sections for not only yourself but each of your kids, family pets and so on. If there are certain things you need to do before you leave on your trip, create a to do list for that as well so nothing gets overlooked or forgotten, like turning of the main water into your home…or dropping your dog off at the kennel.
    When you travel, you always make sure that you get to go to the best tourist spots but it may be difficult to remember everything that you have set out to do during that trip. Store your itinerary in your Evernote account as a synchronized note so that you can access it through the web wherever you are as long as you are connected to the Internet.  You can include maps, restaurants to dine in, hotels and all other travel details that you may need. Keep a copy of your airline tickets, hotel reservations, travel directions and other data that you usually would print right in your iPad or phone. Now, you can travel almost worry-free and without all the extra paper!
  • At home, you can organize some stuff with Evernote. Going to be doing some renovating or decluttering? Evernote is great for that. Create a Notebook for your project and add any supporting information and how to’s that you will need. Then create an overview To Do list to make sure that you don’t forget any steps — like calling a plumber at the right time or having supplies delivered. When we were moving out of the far, we created a huge list of the items we needed to get rid of before we moved. It took a while to complete it all, but without that master list (which was shared by Stefan and myself in our Evernote accounts), we always knew just where we stood and what needed to go next!
    evernote-declutter2
  • Evernote is brilliant for eliminating paper clutter in the household. Do you have stacks and stacks of magazines, full of projects you want to do one day and recipes you want to try? Start scanning them today and you’ll eliminate all that paper clutter by leaps and bounds. The great news is that Evernote can even recognize text in scanned images (and PDFs if you have a Premium account — which is well worth the investment IMO). Organize your recipes however you like in a single Notebook with tags — or a Notebook Stack broken down by categories. Search through all the recipes effortlessly, then create Links to your Notes and you’ve got a fantastic meal plan before you. You can even select multiple Notes at once and copy their links in one single click. Love it!
    meal-plan
    But it’s not just recipes & how to scans that you can organize — but your entire filing cabinet. In fact, I have been going through that process myself. All you need is a scanner and your stacks of documents. And it might sound silly, but every scan I do makes me feel just a little bit more free from the paper goblins! 😉
  • Another great use for this application would be when you are planning out household events like birthday parties, holiday lunches or dinners and other special occasions. Just quickly create a Note for your to-do list, shopping list and other party or event ideas that you may want to use. It makes planning a lot easier and reduces stress too. You no longer have to remember where you bookmarked things and if it linked to the right place. Plus you get to have more time on your hands without having to miss out on a single detail.
  • During the weekend, you and the kids might plan to do something fun like baking or other artsy projects for the home. Put everything that you plan on doing into your Evernote so that you don’t get stressed out and everything goes as planned.

These are just a few of the ways I’ve used Evernote myself for planning projects around the house. But I also use it on a daily basis for my own to do lists, organizing my work projects and just keeping track of ideas I come across but don’t want to spend hours having to track down later. As you can tell, Evernote really makes it possible to simplify many tasks in life, and keep up with what needs to be done from wherever you are and whatever device you are using.

But I have to warn you — the more you use it, the more you’ll want to store in Evernote. It really can be become addictive. But the good news is the more you have in there, the less you need to worry about where to find things, because everything is already in Evernote! 😉

Do you use Evernote? What do you use it for?

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