My Organizing Obsession: Notebooks
There’s so many ways to love notebooks to help you organize. Notebooks consolidate information about a single project. You can keep these on a shelf together, with pages inside neatly ordered.
Here are some of my favorites.
I love family notebooks.
Family binders help you keep up with information about your family such as family calendar and medical for each person. Pages can include your schedule, goals, birthdates, activities, and important information like social security numbers.
I love holiday notebooks.
A holiday binder is where you find all the calendars, recipes and information about your family holiday events and activities. This notebook includes a gift list, Christmas card list and budget for your holiday.
I love bill pay or money notebooks.
Paying bills and keeping up with money can be a chore without a binder to consolidate all your information. Keep a page for passwords, account numbers and payment dates. As bills arrive, tuck these into the binder for safe keeping.
I love project notebooks.
It’s easy to keep all the information together when you are working in a project, as an officer of a club, or on a remodeling project. A project notebook has dates and deadlines, names and contact information for team members, and drafts of the project as it progresses. A club notebook has the membership roster, dates and deadlines for the club, your role as an officer, and club bylaws. A remodeling notebook has your budget, contact information for vendors, and ideas for your project.
I love small business notebooks.
A notebook is the best place to consolidate your information on your small business. If you are starting as a soloentrepreneur, you have research about the business and training for running your business. You might have a chart to track your success. Small businesses revolving around sales have printables for you to keep. A small business notebook keeps this all together.
Other ways to use a notebook:
A gratitude journal is a powerful way to record your positive connections each day.
Keep a daily journal to process and reflect on the day.
Keep up with ideas and information in your notebook. You can make a list of places to visit, wines to drink or books to read. It can hold your bucket list.
Check out more of my organizing obsessions on Pinterest Organizing Products I Love.
I have one for journaling and faith retreats, etc. I think the versatility of notebooks is their biggest plus… you can easily add new categories or pieces. When we renovated, we had a HUGE notebook that never left my side!
I’m definitely a paper person, so this post resonated with me. There’s something about physically putting pen to paper that makes things stick in my brain better!
I use OneNote for a lot of things, because I can copy and paste information to and from it, but I also have three paper notebooks I use regularly:
1. For my virtual assistant networking group – for notes I take to and at the meetings (I tried using my tablet, but it was too fiddly for me)
2. For writing on during phone calls with current and prospective clients. I used to copy the action items into my task list; now I just make a short entry with a reference to the phone notes – saves a lot of time
3. For note taking during teleclasses and webinars
@Seana~ journals are a valuable use of notebooks. So glad you keep these.
@Sarah~ paper person here too!
@Janet~ great hybrid use of great tools
So glad we both love these notebooks!
I find that I have a combination of digital and physical notebooks in my life. Digital notebooks work well for collaboration with clients. While physical notebooks work perfectly for private and payroll paperwork.
Thanks Sabrina for sharing what works. It’s all about creating a personal system!