Creating an Electronic Home Binder

I remember a couple of years ago, I watched this video on creating a home management binder.  I thought it was a great idea to have everything you needed in one place. Plus it was so cute.  If you know me at all, you know I love the cutesy things in life, but I do not have a cutesy or crafty bone in my body.  So whenever I see something cutesy, I decide I must. have. it.

Pros of having a home management binder:

• Once it's out of your head, you don't have to remember it.  Much less stress
• Everything in one spot.
• Cutesy!
• Easy to organize
• Easy to change and adapt

However, this method didn't really last very long.  Knowing me, that's not all that surprising.  It was a pain to lug that huge binder everywhere. And when adding something like this to your life, it takes awhile for the correct habits to form.  You have to remember to check your binder often.  You have to look for that binder often. You have to remember to carry that binder with you. You can see why it didn't work so well.

Fast forward several years and I got a super handy thing called a tablet.  Squee!!  Oh my heck, this thing was amazing.  It had a calendar, so I could immediately record important events and appointments.  It had a sticky-note-type-thing app so I could take notes and not lose them all over the house.  It had a homeschool planner app so I could record our lesson plans and attendance.  I could go on and on. This thing was amazing.

So when I discovered a ebook that promised to turn your tablet into a Home Management Binder, I knew I had to read it!  It's called Paperless Organization by Mystie Winckler.  At only $3.99, it has been worth every single penny.  In this book, she teaches how to use free apps (on both the Android and iOS market) to help with all the organization of your home, school, work, life, etc.

I don't use it exactly as she does.  A friend showed me this website, which teaches how to use Evernote as a task manager.  If one uses this method, one of the apps from Mystie's book is unnecessary. So today, I'm going to talk about how I use Evernote as a Home Management binder and a to do list.

So what is Evernote?  Simply put, Evernote is an electronic binder.  You can create "notes."  Groups of notes are put together into "notebooks."  Groups of notebooks go together into "stacks."  It was easier for me to remember that it compared to a physical binder like this:

Stacks=binders
Notebooks=tabbed dividers
Notes=pieces of paper

Before I found Evernote, I'd come up with the idea of using a spiral notebook for some of our subjects.  Story of the World is an example.  I didn't want our lesson plans to be so strict that I planned the entire year beforehand and we could never deviate, lest the plans become discombobulated.  No one likes discombobulation, even though it's really fun to say.  But I couldn't just fly by the seat of my pants with the SOTW Activity Guide.  There were too many craft items and books to gather before hand.  So in my spiral, I put the chapter title at the top of each page and went through the Activity Guide writing down all the craft supplies, books, and any other items I would need ahead of time.  Then when I browsed Pinterest or other blogs, if I saw a fun idea, I could write it on the correlating chapter page. I'd take a picture for you, but that notebook got lost.

So then, I had the brilliant idea of using a three ring binder.  I could put multiple subjects into the binder (Artistic Pursuits, SOTW, Elemental Science) and use it in the same way.  Then when I planned my homeschool week, I wouldn't have to take out each book and go through the teacher's guides, it would all be written down in that 3 ring binder.

I'd love to show you a picture of it, but alas, it is also lost.

Do you know what does not get lost?  That's right, my tablet!  It's practically attached at my hip.  I've been YouTubing and tweaking and YouTubing and tweaking all over to get my Evernote organized just the way I want.  I've had many people ask me how I do it, so here's a video showing you how I use it. 

I forgot to mention what some of the benefits of the Web Clipper are.  Pinterest just copies the URL and pairs it with a picture.  The Web Clipper actually saves a copy of the clipped item, even if a change was made to the clipped site.  So there will be no messed up links, no links that take you to spam, and the information will always stay in your Evernote even if the site is taken down.  Also, everything in Evernote is searchable, even the text from a clipped article.  So if you can't remember exactly what the project was, you might be able to do a search for it and find it that way.

To use Evernote as a to-do list, The Secret Weapon (TSW) has a series of tags.  As you have projects come to you, you tag each note with the corresponding time frame of when you think you'll actually get around to it. As you work through the projects, you change the note's tag and move other projects up higher on your priority list.  To be honest, I haven't experimented much with this system; I've been busy focusing on getting the binder side of Evernote set up and running.  But last week I did remember that I was in charge of part of our Relief Society Activity.  I used Evernote to come up with a list of everything that needed to be done and I spread that work out over the next few days.  As I thought of new ideas or when I completed tasks, I updated my Evernote so I always knew exactly where I stood.  The day of the activity, I was busy, but I was not stressed. I had done as much work ahead of time as I could, I did what needed to be finished (checking off my to do list as I went), and I brought everything I needed (also on a checklist).  That was the most pain-free project I have *ever* done.  Here's a brief video clip of how I used Evernote for a task manager.

If you have any questions afterwards, please feel free to ask in the comments.  I'm not anywhere close to being the world's tech savviest person, but I make a mean Googler and YouTuber.  For more detailed descriptions of how to use Evernote, please see The Secret Weapon and Paperless Organization.









Megan is the proud mom to Pigby (boy, age 7), Digby (boy, age 4), and Chuck (girl, age 2).  They are enjoying their summer break and look forward to starting second grade and preschool in a few weeks.  Until then, she's going to be playing on Evernote and reading another Brandon Sanderson book (seriously, you all really need to read Warbreaker!)