Organizing using Microsoft OneNote

I have found my new favorite computer program. Microsoft OneNote. Have you heard of OneNote? No, you say? You’re in luck: if you have Microsoft Office 2003 or later, I believe you will have OneNote.

What in the world is OneNote, you ask?



It is like having a notebook on your computer that you can do anything you would do with a regular old notebook or piece of paper.

Here are some things I have come up with where you could use OneNote:

*Taking notes in class
*Writing notes from a meeting at work
*Making a to-do list
*Creating a shopping list
*Managing a project
*Minimizing paperwork/messy buildup
*Maximizing productivity for work and school by connecting OneNote projects with Outlook (!!!!)

What makes OneNote so special?

If you're familiar with Microsoft Word, you'll probably find a lot of similarities to OneNote; however, there are a lot of things that you can do on OneNote that you can't do on Word. The most important being linking your OneNote notes or lists to your Outlook. If you create a to-do list on OneNote you can link it to your task list on Outlook with the click of a button. Better yet, you can pin a "side note" to your desktop to remind you of something that needs doing.

For those of you who are doodlers, getting bored in class can now be spent doodling in the margins of your electronic notebook just as you would if you were using a piece of paper. Drawings or mathematical formulas can be turned into text or a computer generated symbol.

Best of all: OneNote reduces clutter and saves time by eliminating the use of paper. I don't know about you, but I would much rather sort through a well-organized folder on my desktop than page through a spiral-bound notebook trying to find a to-do list or my notes from Biology 101. You can use OneNote on your PC or on your smartphone. I have not downloaded the app yet, but plan to do so!

My Current OneNote Project:



I am preparing to embark on some new housing projects, mostly filling my house with furniture, adding some organizational features to a couple closets and work on making our outdoor space amazing so we can enjoy every moment of the sunny Seattle summers (I think we’re on day 143 of rain right now). I decided to use OneNote to help organize some of my thoughts and ideas.

By using OneNote I was able to create a page for each room or space that we’re looking at making changes to. Each page lists the items we are planning to purchase or the projects that need to be done. Because of how OneNote allows you to make notes like it’s a piece of paper I can copy and paste pictures, images or swatches to help me keep track of different options. With things like our “Major Projects” I can keep track of bids and estimates we get, as well as the contractors and their contact information. I can highlight different items to note their priority status. I can check things off when I purchase them or complete a task (or I can cross it off).

So far I am really enjoying OneNote. I plan to utilize this program to be more organized at work by linking notes/to-do lists to my Outlook. I haven’t gotten this far yet, but I can tell you I am really looking forward to it. I think that OneNote and Outlook are the two best organizational features you can have on your computer.

For more information about OneNote, check out these websites:

Demo of OneNote

Download a trial

More to come next time: Windows Live SkyDrive and why it deserves a gold star.

Microsoft Corporation has no idea who I am. I am only writing about their products because I use them and love them. Microsoft is no way a sponsor of this blog.


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Recipe Organization

The need for a recipe organization makeover comes with a love of cooking. Pursuant to a conversation I had with a friend, Nora, over the holidays, I decided to revamp my need to maintain organization with all of my “loose” recipes. I have my fair share of cookbooks, which require little effort to keep organized, but where the challenge lies is the recipes I print off the internet and the recipes I rip out of my many cooking magazine subscriptions.


I was able to house my loose recipes in file folders until I filled two to capacity and couldn’t find anything. If you only have a few favorite recipes, this could work well for you; however, those of you who see a picture of something delicious and decide to rip it out of the Food Network Magazine like I do… well, you need something bigger and better to stay sane and also to save time.

One of the problems I had with keeping all of my recipes in file folders was that I would have to sort through hundreds of recipes just to find something to eat for dinner or to find a favorite recipe that I wanted to try again. No fun that is. So I picked a beautiful rainy evening (living in Seattle, I have had many to choose from!) and went through all of the recipes about four times trying to consolidate and weed out the recipes I just knew I would never ever try. You’d be surprised how many I got rid of!



Then….. I came up with several categories and sorted recipes based on categories, including: baking, breads, meat, chicken, fish, brunch, sandwiches, slow cookers, sauces, soups, salads, beverages, holiday, ethnic, pasta, etc. After categorizing the recipes I went out and found a recipe organization book on Amazon.com. It took me quite a while to narrow down which book to buy; my selection was based mostly on the categories on the dividing tabs that it came with. I chose a C.R. Gibson recipe organizer; C.R. Gibson makes a lot of different recipe organization paraphernalia you might be interested in. I’d recommend browsing Amazon to find a wide variety. There are certainly plenty to choose from! Be advised that these binders don’t come with too terribly many sheet protectors, so you may want to run out and get a pack of them. I quickly ran out!



Aside from the greatness in organization, one of my favorite parts of the new recipe binder is that all of my recipes are kept in sheet protectors, which allows me to wipe off all of the cooking remnants after I’m done with the recipe. I can always tell what recipes I’ve tried before because they have been destroyed.

Another organizational tool I employ for my recipes is for the 3x5” notecard size recipes I print from the internet. Mostly these are from www.allrecipes.com, a personal favorite site of mine (I keep an online recipe box here, too!). I keep these in a little notecard box that I used to use for school, I think. There are some great notecard boxes on the market that will fit 3x5 or 4x6” recipe cards. I like this idea, too, because it’s alphabetized. I usually remember the name of the recipe that I am looking for if I liked it, so I can find it pretty quickly; but regardless of the recipe’s name, I keep all chicken in the “c” and all pasta in the “p” instead of having, say, “Anniversary Chicken” in the “a” category or “Lemon Pasta” in the “l” category. I just think that’s easier to keep track of everything.



I have to tell you, though, my dream kitchen would include a touch-screen computer in my that pops down from under the cabinet and magically stores all of my recipes and allows me to view online recipe collections for easy kitchen access. I have a feeling I’ll be dreaming for a while.



P.S. – you may be wondering how I keep this system up! That is a “resolution” for me this year. I have subscriptions to three (or more?) food magazines. I have formed some new habits around ripping recipes out of these magazines, due to the fact that with all of the recipes in my house I would need to try a new recipe every day at every meal time for about 900 years in order to actually try something, so I am only allowing myself to rip out a recipe if I am really going to make it. I do look through the ingredients and determine if that’s something I’m even remotely interested in, and if so, then it comes out and goes into a file folder. Yes, a file folder. Also, I should note, after I page through each magazine and determine what I'm going to use, I recycle the magazine, so as to avoid messy buildup. Well, actually, I keep my Cooks Illustrated magazines, but only because every page is filled with delicious goodness and fantastic tips.

From that point, I plan my weekly menus around new recipes. Err, I try to, anyway. If I try the recipe and enjoy it, it goes in my recipe binder, if not, it goes to the curb. So far this is working for me, but I have a lot of new recipes to try and a very, very excellent new cookbook from friend Nora that I am ecstatic about (Williams-Sonoma’s Cooking at Home)…. Off to the kitchen I go!

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Inbox Reduction

A little while back I read a fantastic book that was recommended to me called “Organize Yourself with Office 2007.” One of the focal points of this great text was about how many “inboxes” we have. Thinking about all of the places where we store new information is outrageous. One personal goal I have, since reading this book, is to limit all of the inboxes I have, specifically in my office.

To give you a better idea of what I mean when I say “inbox” here is a short list of inboxes that I have at work:

• E-mail inbox
• Mailbox
• Voicemail box on office phone
• Voicemail box on cell phone
• Paper messages to return a phone call
• Text messages from employees on cell phone
• Six stackable baskets for things that are coming in that I need to deal with, categorized of course
• To-do list on paper to add all of the items coming in that I need to deal with

That’s a lot! And that was just a quick 60 second brainstorm that didn’t even go into personal inboxes.

Honestly, inside that list of work-related inboxes there aren’t many spots where I can trim down and reduce incoming information overload. I can’t just cut out my voicemail on my office phone or cell, nor can I stop receiving e-mail (though I often wish I didn’t get so many e-mails!). But what I can do is manage how I store all of the information in my inboxes.
Six stackable baskets for things that are coming in that I need to deal with is a bit much, eh. I have reduced this substantially. Now, I really have one basket with things that I need to deal with, and the remaining five baskets are for filing things that I’m either working on or need to refer back to. I even turned one of those baskets into an outbox (things I need to mail).

One thing that I used to rely on heavily was little notes ALL OVER MY DESK. Those started cluttering everything and becoming a nuisance and getting lost among each other, so I have discontinued that habit. Instead – I create fewer notes but have a category for the notes. For example, I run an educational program where one of my responsibilities is to put together materials for my staff. Instead of having 17 notes all over my desk saying that Joe needs x, y, z and Jenna needs a, d, t and Hannah needs t, u, v, I have a list of who needs what materials. This sounds so trivial and obvious, but it has made such a big difference in my sanity. Oh, and I got some super cute Anne Taintor sticky notes that say “I dreamed my whole desk was clean.” They make me smile.

It’s the little things that you can do during your workday to make the 8-12 hours you spend there more organized and entertaining. Reducing my inboxes and information intake has been a minor adjustment to a major change.

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Recipe Organization

I love to cook. I love trying out as many new recipes and ways to prepare a dish as possible. Recently, I subscribed to two new cooking magazines, one of which has at least 100 different recipes in each issue. With great excitement, I rip out the recipes and add them to my pile of recipes to try. Unfortunately, that pile grows faster than I can keep up with it! I decided recently to combat that pile and get some order to its unruliness.




Initially my loose recipe pile was stashed in a bulging manila file folder. Well, three bulging manila file folders, to be exact. It was a mess, at the very least. As if that wasn’t enough, my cookbook cupboards couldn’t fit another darn thing in them (that’s another story…). I had recently seen a recipe book where you can protect recipes in sheet protectors bound together in a 3-ring binder and separated by category. Of course this could be a do-it-yourself project – find a plain old 3-ring binder, buy a ginormous package of sheet protectors and some file dividers and call it a day. I however decided that since this binder would house all of my very best recipes it needed to have a bit of style and class.

I scoured the web. I mean scoured. I needed to find the perfect recipe storage book. One of the most important components to my perspective purchase is the categories of foods that would separate the recipes I was going to store. I wanted something that didn’t just break the sections into “breakfast,” “lunch,” and “dinner;” but had some thought into them – baking is too generic, it needed to be separated into “desserts” and “bread” (I would have liked to have added “pastries” too, but I guess that was too much to ask) and pasta needed its own special place (right up front) – it doesn’t quite fit in the “main course” section with the chicken marsala. I think that I was more dedicated to my quest for the perfect recipe storage book than I was to some of my college research papers!



Finally, after hours of searching and days of pondering, I made my decision: the C.R. Gibson Pocket Page Recipe Book in Paddock Shawl.

And I thought that was going to be the hard part.

The hard part was fitting my recipes in the darn book! Let’s be real here, I have probably 14 cookbooks and several hundred loose recipes (not to mention hundreds of recipes stored in online recipe books) – how likely is it that I am ever going to cook even half of the recipes I have? Probably highly unlikely. I love to try new things, but don’t get me wrong, I do have a staple of “go-to” recipes in my back pocket when nothing else sounds good – I do tend to stick with familiar recipes I can trust. That means I must consolidate my enormous recipe collection and become a little bit more realistic. I really cut down - I probably recycled at least 100 recipes. Now, my recipe book is basically complete and I can actually find everything without sorting through hundreds of loose recipes. Every recipe has its place and I still have a little bit more room to add fun new recipes as I find them.


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Online Document Management

I am always looking for new ideas for storing files on my computer. I have a very meticulous organizational system of my documents; however, there are several inter-office documents that I refer to regularly and share with several members of my work team. I recently looked into Google Docs, as well as a few other document sharing websites and think I have found the Golden Ticket.




Check out Google Docs at: www.docs.google.com and you can see for yourself how great it is.

Why I like Google Docs: it is so easy to share documents and for others to make amendments to those documents without having to e-mail them back and forth, as well as the document that is on the screen is always live. You can control if other people can edit the document or if they can just view it.

Ideas for what to share on Google Docs:

• Spreadsheets
• Inter-office documents or information
• Travel plans and documentations
• Event logistics

How to upload & share a doc:
• Visit www.docs.google.com
• Log in (you don’t have to have a gmail/google account – you can use whatever e-mail address you have) or create a log in.
• Click “upload” on the upper left-hand side
• Click “select file to upload”
• Select the file you wish to upload
• Click “start upload”
• Click “share” and insert the e-mail addresses of friends/colleagues you want to share with
• Determine if the people you’re sharing with can view or edit the document(s)
• Save & close – and you’re set!
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Organizing your Health

Being healthy is something that is very important to me. I maintain a healthy lifestyle by eating nutritious, local, homemade and (mostly) non-processed foods; regularly exercising; seeing my doctor on a regular basis and keeping track of my health and well-being. Organizing my health, if you will, has been something that has really stuck with me and made a big impact on my well-being.

I keep track of a lot of things throughout the day, with regard to food and exercise. I've got this great little tracker where I write down my weight, everything I eat and drink, how I feel that day and what exercise I get. I think that by keeping track of all of this really makes me think about what I'm doing. I want to write down the good choices I make when it comes to my meals, but I certainly don't want to write that I licked the brownie batter bowl - but I write it down anyway. My health tracker is kept in a file folder that I can take around with me to work and also have at home. On the outside of the file folder lists my health goals - some are for fitness, some are for food, some are for overall well-being and some are for maintaining a healthy weight. Did you know there is a convenient application for iPhones where you can keep track of all of this? No excuses now!

In conjunction with my health tracker I use a workout chart that helps keep me motivated to get to the gym, do Pilates or go out for a run or do something active. I create a chart that I can hang up on the bathroom mirror or on the fridge and have one column for each week and one column for the number of days I am striving to exercise. I can make a check or give myself a gold star every time I work out. I love to see the progress I make with charts like this and see how well I am sticking with my fitness goals - even though I completely realize that they're a little bit nerdy.

For those of you on a weight loss kick creating your own goal chart is a great way to keep motivated and see your progress as you move forward and drop pounds. What I love most about these health trackers is being able to refer back to earlier dates and see what I ate and how much I exercised and how much I weighed and then looking at today's entry and seeing the positive improvements. I also think that keeping track of such things is a great way to maintain and achieve goals and is a way to be held accountable for living a healthy lifestyle.

Another element that I feel is vitally important is keeping track of your medical records. I actually haven't done this for myself yet, but I recently had all of my records sent to my new clinic and am hopeful that I can obtain a copy. My goal with maintaining my medical records is to create a file and store any important lab results, immunization records, hospitalizations, records of my normal blood pressure and any abnormal medical history. I think it is very helpful to know your medical history and be able to regularly access and refer to it. This is especially important if you have an ongoing disease or chronic condition that you are dealing with, not to mention if you go to battle with your insurance company over a medical claim or procedure. Going back to my daily health tracker, I think it is important to take note on how you are feeling everyday and if you notice any changes in your health, etc., because then you have a record to fall back on in case you fall ill and need to relay your progressing symptoms to your physician.

Keeping track of what you eat, how you feel, your day's worth of exercise and your weight should really reinforce your personal goals. This should help to keep you on track and monitoring your progress. I hope it works as well for you as it does for me!

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Bills in a Box by Jean Chatzky

This article was from "'Make Money, Not Excuses': Bills in a Box" by Jean Chatzky on oprah.com. Chatzky gives you a very in-depth look at her organizational system for bills - what you should keep, what you should toss, how you should store it and how long you need to save important files for.

You probably think you have no idea how to sort and organize your finances. But in fact, you have a very good model. You know how to clean a closet. And you are going to use the very same skills to get your financial paperwork in tip-top shape.

In this exercise, a file box with a carry-handle becomes your closet. If you don't have one, you can pick one up at any office supply store and many drugstores. If you'd prefer not to spend the money, that's okay. You can use a filing cabinet or a drawer that can accept hanging folders. My preference is for the box, though, because it's portable. If you want to pay bills on your wireless laptop while sitting outside on your back porch, you can tote the box with you. If you need to visit your accountant, you can take it along so that you'll be able to answer any of his or her questions. Once you have the box, here's what you need to do.

Get the Right Stuff
When you clean your closet, you need to have the right hangers for pants, sweaters, suits, and so forth. When you organize your finances, you need office supplies.

* Hanging folders (Note: If you are married, get hanging folders in three different colors so that you can see quickly what's yours, what's mine, and what's ours.)
* Sharpie markers (if you have neat handwriting) or a label maker (if you don't)
* Manila folders
* Stamps and envelopes (so you're not always wasting time scrounging for postal supplies)
* Post-it notes
* Letter opener (to avoid paper cuts)
* Stapler
* Calculator
* Pens and pencils

Put the Box to Use
Before you start filing, neatly label your hanging folders. My suggested categories are: Taxes, Insurance, Health Care, Banking, Retirement/Brokerage (retirement accounts are many people's brokerage accounts), Credit Cards, Home, Auto, Legal, Estate (for a copy of your will, living will, health-care proxy, and other estate-planning documents), To-Do, To-Be-Paid.

You may also want folders labeled: Pets, Kids, Mom and Dad, Benefits, Flexible Spending, Travel.

Next, label manila file folders to put into each of the hanging folders. Suppose you have three credit cards—MasterCard, Discover Card, and Banana Republic. You'll want a manila folder for each of them labeled with the year: MasterCard 2006, Discover Card 2006, Banana Republic 2006. When the year turns to 2007, you will make new manila folders labeled "MasterCard 2007," "Discover Card 2007," and so on. Once you pay your taxes and close your personal books on 2006, you can take all the 2006 folders out of your box and move them to a file drawer in which you have hanging folders set up in a similar way. That way your bills-in-a-box filing system remains portable, and you will be able to put your fingers on any important piece of paper at any particular point in time.

You'll eventually get good at figuring out what category needs its own folder. Give yourself leeway to create the folders you think you will need.

And that's it. Now you're set to start organizing using the Four Ds.

The Four Ds #1: Dump
Here are the steps you need to take. I call them the Four Ds. And remember, this is merely a big closet you're cleaning. It just happens to be a closet full of paper.

If you clean a closet as I do, the first thing you do after you buy hangers is pull everything off the racks and toss it onto your bed or the floor. Do the same with your bills and paperwork. If it's all sitting in a pile on your kitchen table, then move it to an area that can be messy for a little while. This can take anywhere from several hours to several days, depending on how much stuff you have to plow through and how much time you have to devote to the process. One thing is certain: You don't want to have to move your workstation halfway through.

Next, go through the other repositories for your bills and paperwork and add those to the pile. Your briefcases, tote bags, desktop, pocketbooks—every one of them should be given the once-over.

The Four Ds #2: Distribute
When cleaning the aforementioned closet, you separate your clothing into piles—things you want to keep, things you want to toss, and things you're not quite sure of. With paperwork, you do the same.

Take the statements or bills out of their envelopes. Open them to full size (unfolded they take up less room). Staple the pages of each month's statement together so they don't get lost.

If you find a bill that needs to be paid, write a check on the spot, put it in an envelope and stamp it so you don't have to deal with it again. Then immediately record the transaction in your checkbook register. Don't let the fact that you're spending time getting organized result in late fees on your credit card bills.

Then put the paperwork into the proper folders, oldest bills first, so that when you open a folder the newest statement is right on top.

The Four Ds #3: Diminish
In 2004, the American Journal of Psychiatry published results of a study that said chronic hoarders—people who seem to save things with more passion than the rest of us—have decreased activity in the parts of the brain used for decision making and problem solving. In other words, there may be a clinical reason why you can't decide what to keep and what to get rid of. That's why you need rules. With clothing, the rule is: If you haven't worn something for two years, it goes. With bills and paperwork, the rules vary depending on what you're looking at. ATM receipts need to be kept only until you receive that month's bank statement and verify that the numbers are correct. Tax returns have to be kept for years and years.

Here's a list to keep you straight. Make a copy of it, then tape the list to the inside top of your file box.

Keep as long as you have the underlying asset (such as a house or a car):

* Insurance policies
* Receipts for important purchases like technology, art, antiques, rugs, jewelry (or anything else you may need a rider on your insurance policy to cover)
* Receipts for renovations or other investments made in the property
* Titles
* Warranty papers

Keep forever in a safe or safe-deposit box; and keep a second copy, if possible, in your attorney's office or another safe location off-premises:

* Adoption papers
* Appraisals
* Birth certificates
* Citizenship papers
* Custody agreements
* Deeds
* Divorce papers
* Financial aid documents
* List of credit card numbers, bank and brokerage statements, and insurance policies, and toll-free contact information
* List of important contacts (lawyer, accountant, doctor, children, parents, etc.)
* Military records
* Powers of attorney (medical and financial)
* Stock certificates
* Wills/Living wills

Toss IMMEDIATELY:

* Credit card solicitations
* Marketing material included in bank and credit card statements

Throw out after ONE MONTH or when you reconcile with a bill or bank statement:

* ATM receipts
* Prospectuses and other information about investments you are considering making (if you're not going to read them, toss immediately)
* Receipts for purchases (assuming you're keeping them or there's no warranty)

Throw out AFTER ONE YEAR or when end-of-year consolidated statements come in and you have filed the taxes for that year:

* Bank statements
* Brokerage statements
* Cell phone, cable, telephone, and Internet statements (except when deducting for work-related expenses)
* Credit card bills
* Pay stubs
* Social Security statements
* Utility bills

Throw out AFTER SEVEN YEARS (when no longer needed for tax purposes):

* Child-care records
* Flexible spending account documentation
* 401(k) and other retirement-plan year-end statements
* IRA contributions
* Purchase records for investments
* Records of charitable donations
* Records on houses you've sold
* Tax returns and backup documentation

What should you do with the stuff you toss? Shred it! A crosscut shredder for at-home use can burn through five sheets of paper at a time. Heavy-duty machines can even cut through old credit cards. You can buy a decent machine for about $100 to $150. And if there's not too much paper to go through, you can tear it up yourself!

The Four Ds #4: Due Diligence
Now that you have a "system," all that's left to do is maintain it. For that, you need three kinds of upkeep.

1. Daily Upkeep
What is the quickest way to turn a neat closet into a messy one? Toss today's dirty clothes on the floor. Every day, when the mail comes in, open up your file box, and open the bills one by one. Write checks (by hand or electronically), deduct the amount of each check from your check register (or electronically—watch as the bank does it for you), stamp the envelope, and put it directly in the mailbox to go out the next day or on the counter with your keys so you'll remember to take it with you the next time you leave the house. Do not procrastinate and say you'll pay bills later, after you've had dinner, after you've had a glass of wine. Start this task and finish it in one swift motion.

And what's Plan B for the night that just doesn't work? The baby is crying, the dog poops on the floor, dinner…oh, heck, you can't even think about dinner. You'll be lucky if you can grab a bowl of Raisin Bran in time for the Friends rerun at 11. In that case, put all the bills that need to be filed in the same place—in your "To-Be-Paid" folder. Whatever you do, don't start separating them into separate folders. Don't put the insurance bill in the "Insurance" folder, the credit card bill in the "Credit cards" folder. You'll never see those bills again, and you'll get hit by late fees. Give yourself a break and deal with your bills as soon as you can, preferably tomorrow.

2. Intermittent Upkeep
Every time you open a new account, take out a new insurance policy, or do something else that requires record keeping, immediately make a new folder. Print a label, and figure out where the folder goes. The first thing that goes into the new folder is the contract you signed, so that if you ever need to refer to it, you know precisely where it is.

3. Annual Upkeep
Every year, after you've filed your taxes, remove last year's manila folders from the file box and place them in another set of hanging files in a filing cabinet or drawer. It is important to arrange both sets of files in the same way so that you'll know precisely where to find any document. You will even be able to tell another person where to find a particular document if needed.

Women spend an average of 55 minutes every day searching for stuff, including 8.2 minutes looking for a receipt. Now that you're organized, wouldn't you like to turn that extra hour into extra cash?

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