Evernote

The technology that I use: Evernote

Posted by Louise NorthHantsMum on in Organising 0 Comment

I can’t believe that I haven’t posted this post up yet!

This is part of my series on the technology that I use  in my life.

I’ve used Evernote for the past four and a half years and I LOVE it!

It is literally, as I’ve said before,  my portable brain. I’ve just checked and I have other 5168 notes (EEK!) and 14 main notebooks with over 127 sub folders. Wow, that is SOOO geeky! lol.

I use Evernote for NHM, for my career, for my job, for my part time job, for studying, for travel, and for us as a family. I also have a folder called “Louise” which has all the stuff that’s related to me.

I’ve mentioned before that I use Feedly to read blogs and I have worked out that you can email a blog post directly into Evernote, using your Evernote email. Hence why I have over 5,000 notes. I squirrel away all of the great ideas that I find and save them for later in Evernote.

I also use the Web clipper functionality. This means you can take a picture of any website and store it in Evernote for future reference. The text in this picture is also searchable in Evernote.

In the latest version of Evernote you can also create shortcuts so I have my favourite folders, the ones I use the most, at the top of Evernote so I can access them quickly.

photo

Below is just a short explanation of the folders that I use:

Family

  • Working On – these are the posts that have my most focus at the moment
  • Miss NHM – these are the notes that are relevant to Miss NHM,e.g. whatever she says by month, that I’ve remembered and made a note off!
  • Teaching Miss NHM – this are all the very cool posts that I’ve seen with great ideas of activities to educate and entertain Miss NHM
  • 2014 – notes that are relevant for 2014
  • Bucket list ideas – All those things I want to achieve in my life!
  • Reading list ideas – Along the way I pick up great idea for books that I really should read, so I put them in this folder.

Folders by theme

  • Money
  • Holidays for us
  • Walks
  • Travel – places I’d like to go with Mr NHM when Miss NHM leaves home
  • Goal Setting
  • Status Update 2014 – Every Thursday I write my status update of what I’ve achieved at work and at home. It’s great for keeping me focused and ensuring that I’ve added value to my life each week.
  • Food recipies – ever get to that point where you have a bunch of ingredients but you don’t know what to do with them? Evernote helps me nearly every time!
  • Paleo Recipes – I’m still dabbling in paleo and this is where I save my recipes.
  • MBA Learnings – some of the notes I used when I finished my MBA. I wish Evernote had been around when I was studying for my Masters as it would have really made my life easier!

NHM

  • Blog weeks are by theme
  • Blog months have a list of notes with subjects
  • Floating post folder with a note for each post or idea
  • Reviews
  • Meet ups
  • Networking
  • Guest posts

I also have historical folders for posts published and historical things to do published.

I have the same folder structure in my NHM emails too. I had to do this at the beginning of 2014 as it was so busy and I couldn’t keep track.

Part Time Business

  • Team
  • Actions
  • Inspiration
  • Contacts

Career

  • Folders for each part of my job with notes
  • Brag folder – any emails that I get that are non confidential and are someone praising me, I mark them as my brag folder and save a copy to Evernote. Perfect for appraisal time 😉
  • Networking folder
  • Appraisal notes – Every quarter I try to update my appraisal goals to show progress. It’s the only way I can keep track.
  • Feedback from others for me
  • Feedback from me for others
  • CV
  • Women in Industry – great articles I’ve read about successful women who inspire me

Book

  • Folders for each idea with notes for plots, themes and chapters

This is just a brain dump of some of the structure in my Evernote.

This isn’t the complete list of notebooks that I use, but it gives you an idea of how flexible Evernote is.

I use it on my computer, iPhone and iPad but I know it also works on Android as Mr NHM uses it.

If you want to know more about how I use Evernote, just ask me when you see me next!

Be warned though, I may bore you to tears :-D.

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Things I’ve learnt recently

Posted by Louise NorthHantsMum on in Organising 0 Comment

As it’s Friday, today’s post is going to be filled with a few random things, that don’t constitute a full post of their own. I’ve learnt a lot about parenting over the past six months and I’ve built on what I’ve already learnt.

Slow Cookers

Yup, it’s slow cooker season again. Yippeee!!! Although, to be honest, we haven’t stopped using ours! I indulged and bought a slow cooker recipe book and it’s been brilliant. We use the slow cooker at least once a week and I try to ensure that we have as much variety of meals using the slow cooker so I’ve been branching out. A friend told me that you can make a lasagna in your slow cooker! I’ve found a recipe but haven’t tried it yet as I feel it’s still a bit advanced. However, I also found a recipe for making muffins in the slow cooker, so I want to try that soon. Check out my post earlier in the year about why I love my Slow Cooker.

Ace gentle

An experienced Mum told me about Ace Gentle. I was moaning about how I could never get stains out of whites and didn’t want to use bleach. Her children always look immaculate in whites so I asked her what her secret was. She willingly shared the joy of Ace Gentle with me. It’s fantastic. My little one’s bibs have been revolutionised and her white tops are still white! It doesn’t get every stain out completely but I’ve found that if I hang clothes out on a sunny day, it gets the majority of the stain out. Much better than anything else I’ve tried.

Evernote

I’m still completely addicted to Evernote. I use it for everything, from recording warranty details on new items, for work, for NHM, and for organising our daily lives. I love that I can sync it to my phone, iPad and computer and you don’t have to be connected to the internet for it to work. Only for it to sync. It really is my portable brain.

Dropbox

I use Dropbox for the same reason I use Evernote. It’s easy to use and I can sync it to all of my devices. I used it in April  to store pdf versions of our passports when we went abroad. I use it to store any word or excel documents that I might want easy access too.

9 Ways to get your husband to help around the house

I probably shouldn’t share this, but it did make me snigger!

Nappies

We’ve always used Pampers nappies. I tried some eco ones early on but they weren’t very good and leaked everywhere. I wanted to get some reusable nappies but didn’t know enough about it and didn’t know if we could justify the initial outlay.

We were using the main Pampers brand nappies but I’ve discovered that Simply Dry Pampers nappies are pretty much the same as the Expensive Pampers brand, just half price. I haven’t had any incidents of them leaking yet and the only difference seems to be in the thickness of the nappy and the marketing image on the front of the nappy. Otherwise, they seem to be exactly the same.

I’ve also discovered that swimming nappies come apart. Why did no one tell me this beforehand? Even my husband didn’t know this! This was a huge revelation. We’ve both been using them as pull up nappies since my little one started swimming at 3 months old. Big DUH to us that we only found it out, literally on the day she turned 18 months! lol. Now we know that we can tear the side of the nappy to get them off. This also goes for pull up nappies, which we tried recently but I hated because they were a nightmare to get off. It’s always the simple things that make such a difference!! lol.

What are the things that you’ve learnt recently that you think might help other parents?