(picture by Handmade Daily)
The problem is that I love to be organized. Super organized. Ultra super organized.(I've been called anal before - which I took as a compliment, actually.) I am known for making spreadsheets. Mail merges. Databases. Even the mention of these things kind of makes me glaze over. In a good way.
So, recently, I decided to re-organize myself. I wanted to get a new daily notebook and low and behold, Teresa, gave me this for my birthday. Not only is it beautiful and personalized, it works perfectly as my daily journal and organizational system.
I love to organize on my computer, my USB drive alone has hundreds of folders and files from years gone by. I love that thing. Seriously. But, I am not online every time I need to organize, so I use my daily notebook to keep me on top of things.
The inside of this notebook has sweet little pockets for pens and such. Of course, that's what I use them for. The larger pocket is perfect for stamps and return address labels. Underneath this, I stick the bills that I need to pay. A few little letter stickers decorated this spot. It reminds me that I need to look in there, too!
Simple Mom has the MOST EXCELLENT daily planner (she calls it the Daily Docket). I print this and shrink it to 75% for my daily planner use. I organize a week at a time using these in the very front of my notebook. Here was yesterday's plan. You can get your own Daily Docket here.
Simple Mom also has an awesome master grocery list. I shrink these as well, and put them next to the calendar for the month. I just printed a pretty calendar from A Print A Day to fit my page. I like to make is smaller than my page so that I can see the whole month but still have room to makes some notes on it.
On the next page, I just glued an envelope I made from an old calendar page so that I can store this month's receipts. The next page has our monthly budget (more or less) and I record our actual spending next to it. I find it much easier to input into my spreadsheet once a month if I do it this way.
I use the back of the notebook cover to store my blank Daily Docket pages and Grocery Lists. This notebook was just exactly what I needed! Teresa is GOOD!
I have pages in the notebook dedicated to Christmas 2008, Birthdays & Other Important Dates (by month) 2009, Home Ideas by Room, Looking For Items when I'm out shopping, and just random miscellaneous notes. I cut out little pictures or save notes about articles or brainstorm about blog articles I want to write. Once I fill this book, I'll get another one that fits my RadiCool cover.
I've used this system for a couple of years, and it works well for me. Tell me how do you stay organized? Do you? What works? What doesn't?
