Whenever you come across a great campground or biking/hiking trail online, clip it into Evernote using one of Evernote’s Web Clipper options. Once in Evernote, tag the note or put into a dedicated notebook.

Find even more Evernote uses and tips at: Ron’s Evernote Tips

• Windows
• Evernote Web
• Windows Mobile

We’re always on the lookout for unexpected ways that people are using Evernote. When we heard about California dairy farmer Ray Prock and his Evernote use, we had to see it for ourselves.

On our recent visit to his family farm, not only did we get a tour of the dairy, but we also learned about the critical role Evernote plays in keeping everything running. Ray, like lots of business owners, has the huge task of managing enormous amounts of information. In his Evenote account, Ray captures information on his cows, including their numbers, treatments and feed details. He also keeps track of his maintenance needs, supplies, notes from meetings, and remaining tasks.

Check out the video below to get a peek at our visit to Ray Lin Dairy.

Evernote is great for comparison shopping and researching a big purchase. Trying to decide which TV to buy, or which car is right for you, can seem nearly impossible. Use Evernote to clip reviews, prices and features. Have all your research and necessary info in one place; fully searchable (with links) to help you make the right decision. When you get to the store you can pull up all that great research on your mobile phone.

Find even more Evernote uses and tips at: Ron’s Evernote Tips

Part of Evernote’s Food Month

We recently asked you, our blog readers, to submit some delicious fall recipes. We chose our favorite, clipped it into Evernote, and were off to the farmers market to pick up the ingredients. With goodies in-hand, we met up with Laurine Wickett, chef and owner of Left Coast Catering (and Top Chef contestant), to cook up this great fall meal. Here’s the video of the culinary excitement. The full recipes are below.

By the way, if you’re looking for an awesome Bay Area caterer for an upcoming event, you need to check out Left Coast Catering.

Recipes

Arugula salad with roasted beets, shaved fennel, toasted hazelnuts and blue cheese
Serves 4

• 12 oz arugula
• 16 baby beets ( red, chiogga or gold), or 2 large red beets
• 1/2 c. blanched hazelnuts – toasted and rough chopped
• 1 fennel – cut in half, core removed and shaved thin just before using
• 1/2 c. crumbled blue cheese
• 1/4 c. – ½ c. sherry vinaigrette – recipe follows
• Olive oil to coat the beets
• Salt and pepper

To prepare the beets, remove the beet greens (if any) and save for another use. Wash and dry beets. Coat with olive oil, salt and pepper. Place in pan and add 1/4 cup water. Cover tightly with foil and roast in the oven at 350F until done. Check after 20 minutes is using baby beets. If using large beets, check after 45 minutes. Beets are done once they can easily be pierced with a sharp knife. Cool, peel and cut into wedges for large beets, in half or quartered for baby beets.

To prepare the salad, mix arugula, beets and fennel with sherry vinaigrette just to coat ingredients, season with salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning. Top with chopped nuts and crumbled cheese

Sherry Vinaigrette
Makes 1 cup

• 1/4 c. sherry vinegar
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 t. honey
• 1/2 t. dijon
• 1/2 t salt
• pinch of pepper

Combine honey, dijon, vinegar, salt and pepper and whisk. Mix the oils together. Slowly add in the oil while continuing to wisk until all the oil is added and dressing is emulsified.

Pork and Orange Stew
From: At Home with Michael Chiarello

• 1-1/2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, cut into bite-size chunks
• Gray salt or Citrus salt
• 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons NapaStyle Fennel Spice Rub or 2 teaspoons fennel seeds (toasted and ground)
• 2 tablespoons Cointreau
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
• 6 cups chicken stock or canned low salt chicken broth
• 1 bay leaf
• 1-1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter or extra virgin olive oil
• 3/4 pound potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
• 12 pearl onions, peeled
• 2 cups shiitake mushrooms, quartered (stems removed)
• 12 baby carrots, stemmed
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
• Gray salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 pound cooked wide, flat noodles
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley

Full recipe is available at NapaStyle.com

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• Caleb Troughton profile: A food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes
• 10 Ways to Run a Restaurant with Evernote Chef John Andrews shares how Evernote helps him run a restaurant
  

• Mac
• Windows
• Phone: Evernote Mobile Web (http://www.evernote.com/m)
• iPod Touch
• Evernote Web

Part of Evernote’s Food Month

John Andrews is a chef and manager of Victoria Station in Salem, Massachusetts. Over his fifteen years in the restaurant business, John has figured out many ways to deal with the immense organizational challenges of operating a restaurant. With Evernote, John has created a system that keeps him sane and keeps his restaurant running smoothly.

Why Evernote Works For Me

Evernote has become a critical tool for running my restaurant, Victoria Station. Operating a restaurant is so much more than cooking the food–it’s a huge juggling act. My biggest challenge is dealing with the sheer amount of information being thrown at me from every possible angle. I need a place to put it all, and for me that place is Evernote. Getting that finished dish onto the table takes tons of coordination. Here are some of the ways that Evernote helps the restaurant function.

1. Coordinating food vendors

In any given week, I might interact with 10-15 different vendors and purveyors, each with their own product guides and point of sale flyers for any new items. Multiply this by the hundreds of products from each vendor, plus the need to maintain a fully functioning kitchen seven days a week and you can see how it could easily get out of control. To keep it under control, I throw everything into Evernote.

2. Finding new ingredients, creating new recipes

Today’s culinary consumer is well-informed, which makes my job of coming up with unique dishes on a daily basis a challenge. Since I don’t like to limit myself to one style of cooking, I tend to do a lot of research online, especially for new products and ingredients that I haven’t used before. With Evernote, I can clip or email ideas into my “Recipes and Food Ideas” notebook from my computer or phone. Then, whenever I do a search, not only does Evernote display the product, but also any related ideas, along with information on which vendors carry that product. I have also shared this notebook with some fellow chefs so that they can contribute their ideas, as well.

3. Keeping everything organized wherever you are

I spend most of my time in the kitchen, which means that I don’t always have access to a computer during the day. Having Evernote on my phone is a big deal because it allows me to stay on top of things wherever I may be. If I get an email from a vendor for an interesting product or an important proposal, I just forward it along to my Evernote account. Then, later when I get back to my desk at work or at home I can pull it up in Evernote.

4. Getting rid of paper clutter

As a chef, I work long hours and the last thing I need is to waste time reorganizing paperwork (receipts, bills, etc) or spending additional time trying to locate loose papers that become lost in the clutter. With Evernote and my scanner, I easily convert the paper mess into digital notes that are always available whenever I need them.

A sampling of some of the vendor flyers and product sheets

5. Staff training

I have specific notebooks for Wait Management and Service Training. I keep all relevant training documents and information in these Evernote notebooks. Whenever I find something new, I simply tag it (waitstaff, kitchen, management) and then add the name of the restaurant. This way, I can pull up specific information for my current restaurant or establishments that I have managed at in the past.

6. A complete backup of my Food Life

Having all my information backed up and available on multiple computers is an essential feature for me. I ran restaurants in the past, and whenever I left, I lost years of specials and ideas that I would love to have back. Now that I have Evernote, I have everything backed up and available in my account. I’m no longer tied to a single computer that I may not have access to forever. Now, wherever I go, my ideas stay with me.

7. Keep track of your ideas for a website redesign

For the redesign of our website, I created a Shared Notebook to share ideas and inspirations with our graphic designer and webmaster. I clipped images and pages that I liked from other restaurant sites. I also saved all the graphic work that my designer created. The three of us are able to access the shared notebook at any time to pick and choose what we need for the project regardless of what computer we happen to be using. I can also remotely check the progress of everything using my phone to make sure things are being handled efficiently.

This photo is on the home page of our website. Evernote allowed me to save a high-quality image, and then share it with the designer without worrying about email restrictions.

8. Collaborative menu creation

The shared notebooks work great for collaborating on creating a menu with other managers and chefs at my restaurant. I also take pictures of finished dishes with my phone, pop the pic onto my desktop, add descriptions and recipes, then share with the others. This way everyone can know exactly what the finished dish should look like, and have a record of each dish.

9. Catering projects

Whenever I need to work on catering projects and functions menus, I use Evernote as a way to keep the menus organized with my function coordinator and day manager. If they have any questions about what type of event it is, how the event should be set up, or how the food should be presented, they can go to my Functions shared notebook in Evernote. There they can access the contract, menu, table setting, and food instructions. I keep everything tagged with the name of the event for easy searching.

10. A system designed by Me for Me

The best thing about Evernote, is that the system is completely open. It is really only limited by your imagination. Evernote is so flexible that I was able to adapt it to work specifically for me. Once I came up with my system it was able to do everything I needed. As a chef, I was able to integrate it into my work-flow and perfect it, rather then having to adapt my work-flow to fit into an already established system.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• Caleb Troughton profile: A food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes

Blog: Food Goes In Mouth
Twitter: @foodgoesinmouth

Part of Evernote’s Food Month

Caleb Troughton is a web developer, blogger, and Evernote user from the Central California coast. His blog, Food Goes In Mouth, follows him through experimentation, development, and cooking of fantastic original recipes.

Caleb describes his cooking style as daring and instinctive; he rarely sticks to straightforward recipes–rather, he often plays with ingredients and always takes photos of his delicious and, occasionally, unexpected creations.

How does Evernote help you?
I use Evernote to record ingredients and recipes for my shopping, cooking, and blogging. During my day job, whenever a recipe inspiration hits me, I record the idea in a text note. Before I go to the store, I look over my notes and start testing things in the kitchen. I am constantly editing and revising the note as I go. Evernote is my whiteboard. It’s where I can play around with flavors in my head, without needing to be in the kitchen all day long. Over time, these notes evolve into complete recipes and eventually blog posts.

Here’s an example of a recipe brainstorm, which led to the recipe below:

Caleb shared one of his original recipes with us. You can clip the recipe below.

Vegan Umami Risotto (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Arborio rice
• 1/8 cup barley
• 1/4 cup fresh white corn
• 1/4 cup fresh shiitake mushroom, diced (4 mushrooms left whole)
• 2 medium-sized shallots, finely diced
• 15g kombu (dried kelp) sheets
• 2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil
• Fresh italian parsley
• Fresh tarragon

Instructions:

• Spread the barley out on a baking sheet and dry roast at 425°F for 5 minutes. Set aside for later use. Take equal parts of fresh parsley and tarragon and finely chop.
• Set aside 1/4 cup of this mixture.
• Make kombu dashi by following these four steps. Clean the kombu by wiping it with cloth, soak it in water, heat that water to just below a boil, and remove the kombu. For the amount of kombu I’ve listed in the ingredients, you will want to use approximately 8 cups of water.
• Keep the heat on the kombu dashi so that it stays just below a boil. The dashi will be our stock for cooking the risotto.
• In your favorite skillet heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add shallots and some salt and cook until translucent.
• Add the Arborio rice and roasted barley. Stir, coating the grains in oil and keep cooking over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for two minutes.
• Kick the skillet to high heat. Pour a ladle of the dashi into the skillet. Start stirring.
• Whenever the bottom of the skillet is visibly dry, bring another ladle of the dashi over. Always keep stirring. You’ll notice things start to get creamy and thicker almost immediately.
• After 10 minutes of this, add the corn. Continue with the cycles of adding dashi.
• After another 8 minutes (18 minutes total now) add the diced mushrooms and continue.
• At 25 minutes, make your next liquid addition your last. Things should be al dente at this point. If not continue the cycle until you reach al dente.
• During the last addition, salt the risotto to taste.  I avoid adding salt before this because with all the liquid reduction going on, it may become easy to overdue things.
• When the bottom of the pan is nearly dry, add the whole mushrooms on top of the risotto, cut the heat, put a lid on the thing, and walk away for 3 minutes while the mushrooms steam a bit.
• Remove the lid and stir in the fresh herbs.
• Serve up a pile of risotto and top it with one of the steamed shiitakes.

Visit Caleb’s blog to see more delicious recipes.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• 10 Ways to Run a Restaurant with Evernote Chef John Andrews shares how Evernote helps him run a restaurant
  

What is Foodzie?

Foodzie is a marketplace devoted to small and artisanal food producers from around the US. They carry an obscene amount of deliciousness (just wait till you see the food photos). Best off all, they help you discover locally-made foods that you never knew existed.

What’s the theme?

As any San Franciscan will tell you, a party ain’t a party without a theme. So, for our tasting, the theme will be Tasty Gifts. Although I’m convinced that anything from this site will make a tasty gift, the folks at Foodzie have hand-selected their absolute favorite products just for us. Personally, I’m a fan of this, this, this, and this.

As a very special bonus, some of the producers will be on hand to tell us about their gourmet vittles.

When? Where?

Date: October 29th
Time: 6pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Special gift from Yak Pak

In addition to the culinary goodness, all attendees will get a super special gift from the great bag-producing folks at Yak Pak. If you’re not familiar with these guys you need to check them out.

Interested in joining us?

If you would like to join us, please leave a comment below telling us your favorite way to use Evernote. We will randomly select six (6) people from among the commenters. Everyone selected will be allowed to bring one guest to the event. We will contact the selected individual via email, so be sure to use a valid email when leaving your comment. To be considered, comments must be submitted by 12pm PT on Wednesday October 21st. Good luck!

Can’t make it? Don’t worry. There’s more Foodzie excitement to come. Stay tuned.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• Caleb Troughton profile: A food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes
• 10 Ways to Run a Restaurant with Evernote Chef John Andrews shares how Evernote helps him run a restaurant
  

I just got back from eight hectic days in Japan. It was wall-to-wall meetings with no room for sightseeing, but I did make time to eat a quick bite here and there. And there. And at that place around the corner.

Naturally, I decided that I would photograph every single thing that I ate and put it into an Evernote shared notebook. I had three good reasons for this:

1. It’s Evernote Food Month, and this is a great way to remember your trip (and shortcut all those, “what’d you have for lunch?” conversations with the relatives back home).
2. It was a good excuse for me to buy a new camera and Eye-Fi card (read about Eye-Fi and Evernote).
3. It would prevent me from eating anything that I would be too ashamed to share with the world.

That last reason turned out not to have any impact.

My notebook

Here is my shared notebook of every single thing I ate in Japan. Since this is clearly the sort of content that you’ll constantly want at your fingertips, you can link the notebook to your own account.

The setup worked great. The Panasonic GF1 was small enough to bring everywhere and it took great, low-light shots of the food, which the Eye-Fi Pro automatically geotagged (try hitting “Map it” on most of the notes) and magically transferred into my Evernote account. I did some light editing in Evernote itself (putting in titles, text, and occasionally right-clicking the photos to open them in my photo editing software to crop things non-edible) and then dragged all of the food notes into this shared notebook.

All in all, a great experience! I’m going to do this whenever I go anywhere interesting from now on.

And now for something completely different…

While on my food cataloging spree, I realized this process would also work well for those (clearly not me on this trip) that are keeping tabs on what they eat for dietary reasons. Just make a few small changes to the procedure:

• Photograph only the portion you eat (some of my pictures are of communal-sized dishes, which I shared with several people).
• Add a known-size object (like a business card; yours or the restaurant’s) to each shot for scale.
• Add any calorie or nutritional info as text.

And voila, now you have an always-accessible dietary log.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• Caleb Troughton profile: A food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes
• 10 Ways to Run a Restaurant with Evernote Chef John Andrews shares how Evernote helps him run a restaurant
  

October is food month here at Evernote and so I thought I’d share a personal food-related story about how Evernote helped me save a treasured family recipe book.

The book

My grandmother was an amazing cook. She loved to devise and collect recipes into a massive recipe book, which was a constant fixture on her kitchen counter. Spending time in that kitchen became a family pastime—full of delicious smells and flavors. Some of my earliest and most vivid memories are of standing beside her looking up as she worked her magic.

It has been many years since my grandmother passed away, but everyone in the family still reminisces about her baking. At a recent family get-together, someone mentioned a cookie my grandmother used to bake and how delicious it was. The next thing I knew, my aunt went to the other room and brought out a faded, stained book loosely held together with rubber bands. We all instantly recognized it as The Book.

As we huddled around flipping through the brittle pages, you could hear whispers of “Oh I remember those” and “Mine never tasted the same as hers.” Each recipe, in her familiar handwriting, bringing back special memories for each of us.

This book was important to my family and I didn’t want it to disappear. So, I took it upon myself to digitize it and then share it. I turned to Evernote.

How Evernote helped

Preserving this book was incredibly important. Here’s how I used Evernote to transform this old recipe book into a digital notebook:

• First, I took pictures of the individual pages with a digital camera. I chose not to scan the book for fear of damaging it further, though scanning into Evernote is also a great option.
• Then, I created a new notebook in Evernote and add the images.
• I titled each note with the recipe name.
• Finally, I shared the notebook by going into the Sharing settings on Evernote Web.

With a little help from Evernote, I was able to turn this family heirloom, which had been tucked away in a dusty closet, into something that is now archived and easily accessible by the whole family.

Take a look

I would like to share this book with you, too: http://www.evernote.com/pub/ronoledo/recipes. Feel free to link it to your own account by clicking the “Link to my account” button at the top right of the page.

All those wonderful food memories that we thought were lost can now live on forever, thanks to Evernote!

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• Caleb Troughton profile: A food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes
• 10 Ways to Run a Restaurant with Evernote Chef John Andrews shares how Evernote helps him run a restaurant
  

If you’re anything like me, then food-related thoughts enter your mind with embarrassing frequency. From recipes to restaurant reviews to gadgets to cookbooks, it seems there’s always something worth throwing into Evernote for later. Without exaggeration, Evernote is the greatest food companion I’ve ever had (sorry friends and family). As it turns out, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Welcome to Food Month

And so begins Evernote’s Food Month, our exploration of all the many ways gastronomy and Evernote intersect. Throughout October, we will bring you user stories, videos, tips, community projects, giveaways, and tons of other great stuff all around the topic of food and Evernote.

Let’s get cooking!

We’re really excited about our first Food Month activity: seasonal recipe cooking class. We’ve enlisted the help of Laurine Wickett, chef and owner of Left Coast Catering (and Top Chef contestant) to use Evernote to put a new twist on your favorite seasonal recipes.

UPDATE: The video is up! Thanks Kanton for the recipe suggestion.

How it works

Leave a comment on this post telling us your favorite fall main and side dishes. You can either give us the name of the dish, a personal recipe, a favorite one, or link to a recipe on the web. If you provide a recipe, make sure to always give appropriate attribution.

Later in the month, Laurine will use Evernote to prepare her favorites from among the submitted dishes for a special video segment.

Lots more to come

Stay tuned for tons of great ideas on how to use Evernote to turn your notable world into an edible one.

Food Month posts

• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• Caleb Troughton profile: A Food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes

Put your home’s room dimensions into Evernote. This way, whenever you’re out shopping and come across a perfect leather chair, area rug, or piece of wall art you won’t need to worry about whether or not the piece will fit. Launch Evernote and the answer will be waiting.

Read more tips at: Ron’s Evernote Tips

Hear Brandie debate & debunk life’s
organizing myths on her weekly
internet radio show & podcast “The O-Myth”

Part of Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter Series

My Name is Brandie, and I’m the “The Home Office Organizer”. In addition to being professional organizer, I am also an author, speaker, blogger and small business owner. My specialty is empowering busy professionals with information, technology, tools and simple organizing solutions.

I had heard of Evernote a while ago. Then recently, a friend said she was using it and couldn’t live without it, so I thought it was time to give it a try. Boy, am I so glad I did! Evernote is such an open concept, that, at first, I had trouble figuring out where to start. Let me tell you how I have been using it, and share some tips on getting started. Hopefully, this will help you see some of the possibilities.

3 Ways to Get Started Organizing with Evernote

1. Just jump in

At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to use Evernote. Since I learn best by doing, I decided to jump right in. I started with capturing websites, because there seem to be more of those than there are grains of sand. There was a lot of useful information that I wanted to refer back to, but I didn’t know where to put it. So, I captured the link (or a clip of the page), tagged it and filed it away.

2. Use notebooks

I set up one personal notebook for quotes (I post these weekly on my blog) and then had separate notebooks for ongoing projects.

As an example of an ongoing project, I co-host a podcast but I am also working on a second podcast to integrate into my blog. I have a gazillion good ideas, and I was having trouble capturing them. Now, I have an Evernote notebook titled “Podcast XYZ” and “Podcast ABC”. This way, I can take notes, and file them in the appropriate notebook, and everything I need for each project is always accessible.

3. Use tags

What if you come across a bit of information and you aren’t sure what notebook to put it in, because you might forget, and then….Relax. Just use tags. Let’s say I find a podcast show that I like, and would like to learn more about their format for my own education. However, the podcast doesn’t cleanly fit into a single existing bucket? It could easily go in either my “Podcast ABC” or “Personal” notebooks. So, instead of fretting, I put it in Personal and tag it with “podcast”. This way, I can find it later, and it’s neatly put away.

Finding What I Need: The Five Minute Rule

Evernote helps me stay organized. What does that mean? When I speak, I tell my audiences and clients that “organized” means you can find most anything in about 5 minutes. Evernote definitely helps you follow the five minute rule.

Evernote has been great in corralling all those little notes, pictures, snapshots, websites and other tasty bits of information. It’s working wonders so far. I have Evernote installed on my desktop and on my iPhone, and I sync between the two. It couldn’t be easier or more portable! I honestly don’t know what I would do without it.

Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter

Check out our previous post in this series:

• How to Unclutter with Evernote and Rubbermaid in 4 Steps
• 5 Ways to Organize Your Busy Family Life — Guest post by Erin Doland
• 5 Ways Evernote Maximizes Your Organizing Potential — Guest post by Lorie Marrero
• Using Evernote to Solve Everyday Organizational Challenges — Guest post by Deb Lee

A few months ago we moved into a sunny new office space. While most of the office looked nice and clean, our storage closet quickly began to resemble a garbage heap.

Around this time, we came across a great post on Rubbermaid’s Adventures in Organization Blog, in which Jim Deitzel and crew helped a lucky subscriber take control of a messy garage with the help of some know-how and a few nifty Rubbermaid containers. We were inspired. So much so, that we came up with a simple 4-step method that uses Evernote and Rubbermaid to help you stay organized for good.

1. Pack it: Fill your Rubbermaid storage box
2. Label it: Place a clearly written label on the container
3. Snap it: Use your cameraphone or digital camera to snap a photo of the label and container contents
4. Note it: Add the photos into Evernote, then title the note. You can also type a quick list of the box contents. If you keep the containers in different rooms, make sure to note where the containers are located.

What’s where

By using this method, you will always know exactly what you’ve stored and where everything is. A quick search in Evernote will show you photos and contents of each container. And don’t forget, Evernote works on your computer and phone, so you can access this information whenever you need.

Rubbermaid giveaway (it’s over)

To help jump start your uncluttering project, we’ve teamed up with Rubbermaid for an exciting giveaway. We’re giving away four Rubbermaid gift packs. Each gift pack contains four 15-quart storage boxes and three 18-gallon storage boxes.

How to enter

It only takes two steps to enter:

• Follow @evernote and @rubbermaid on Twitter
• Send a public Twitter message to @evernote containing the hashtag #evernote_rubbermaid

Just one tweet gets you entered. We’ll announce We announced the winners on Wednesday September 2nd at noon on our Facebook fan page. Stay tuned and good luck. Winners will be contacted via direct message on Twitter, so be sure to  follow @evernote.

This giveaway is open to Evernote users in the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) and Canada.

Summer to Unclutter

We hope you are all enjoying the “Summer to Unclutter” month and all the great ideas from our new friends in the organization community.

• 5 Ways Evernote Maximizes Your Organizing Potential — Guest post by Lorie Marrero
• Using Evernote to Solve Everyday Organizational Challenges — Guest post by Deb Lee
• 5 ways to Use Evernote to Organize Your Busy Family Life — Guest post by Erin Doland

Book pre-order: Unclutter Your Life in One Week: A 7-day plan to organize your home, your office, and your life — available November 3

Get organizing advice from Erin every Tuesday and Thursday at the Real Simple magazine website

Part of Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter Series

To get from my bedroom to my kitchen, I used to have to walk along a maze of clutter through my apartment. I kept everything I deemed sentimental because I was afraid that if I got rid of it there wouldn’t be any proof I had experienced something and I would forget about it. One day, my husband sat me down and asked me to change the way we lived. He didn’t want to be surrounded by the past; he wanted room for our future. Over the course of the next six months, I conducted research and organized and got rid of literally thousands of pounds of stuff.

The process was life-changing. It is out of this transformation that I started writing for Unclutterer.com and ultimately became its editor-in-chief.

5 Ways to Use Evernote to Organize Your Busy Family Life

Life with children is hectic, and staying organized can help keep things from getting out of control. Armed with a computer, smart phone, and Evernote’s family of products, you can keep your cool instead of stressing out. The following five tips can help you to maintain some sanity in your busy family life:

1. Remember where you parked

Whether at the mall, an amusement park, or a concert with your kids, the last thing you want to do is delay getting home because you can’t find your car in the enormous parking garage or lot. When you first park, snap a picture of identifying information near your space and save it to Evernote. If you’re in a rental, also add a picture of the license plate of the car you’re driving. Once you’re back, either delete the pictures or add notes about the quality of the spot if it’s somewhere you might want to park again. “Great place for quickly getting onto the highway ramp after a packed concert at Wolf Trap Amphitheater.”

2. Food on the go

Using Evernote’s Web Clipper, I bookmark our favorite restaurants’ menus. When we’re pressed for time or grabbing takeout with friends, I have all of our go-to places in one quick, easily accessible location. Plus, with Evernote’s robust search engine, I can quickly compare prices for our favorite dishes.

3. Keep track of names and faces

Have you ever received a phone call from Dylan’s mom and then wondered for hours afterward whom you were talking to? Take photographs of your kid’s friends with their parents, send the snapshots into Evernote, then label them with the names of everyone in the photo. Finally, organize the pictures by activity (Braeden Soccer, Molly Ballet, Jackson First Grade). It’s nice to do a fast pass of mom and dad names before heading to the next event. Also, if there is a phone number list, you can scan it into Evernote and have everything together. (You might also add information about food allergies–no one wants to accidentally send a kid to the emergency room at your son’s next birthday party.)

4. Shopping lists based on recipes

I’ll keep copies of my favorite recipes in Evernote. Then, on my grocery list, I’ll just write “Grandma’s Pork Roast” or “Sesame Brussels Sprouts.” Once I’m at the store, I pull up Evernote on my phone and check out the specifics of the recipe. If I’ve found that I like one brand of an ingredient better than another, I’ll even snap a picture of the packaging and store it with the recipe for future reference. This also comes in handy if my husband is doing the shopping and I want to quickly send him the images and recipes.

5. Birthday and holiday shopping simplicity

Maybe Molly wants the latest toy for her birthday, but she wants the one that blinks and goes “whirrrrp!” instead of laughs and says “blurrrrb!” Snap a quick picture of it into Evernote to make sure you’re going to buy the one she wants. Create a notebook of many possibilities and have it on hand when grandma and grandpa ask for gift ideas. You can also save the Amazon.com page to the same notebook to make buying even easier when the time comes to do your shopping.

How do you use Evernote in your busy family life? I’d love to hear about your tips in the comments.

Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter

Check out our previous post in this series:

• 5 Ways Evernote Maximizes Your Organizing Potential — Guest post by Lorie Marrero
• Using Evernote to Solve Everyday Organizational Challenges — Guest post by Deb Lee

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Erin Rooney Doland is Editor-in-Chief of Unclutterer.com, a website providing daily articles on home and office organizing. Her book Unclutter Your Life in One Week will be available November 3, 2009, by Simon Spotlight Entertainment (a division of Simon and Schuster).

Part of Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter Series

Hi there, I’m Deb Lee, a Certified Professional Organizer®, and the owner of D. Allison Lee Professional Organizers. As an organizational expert and someone who teaches others how to maintain order in their lives, I am always looking for new ways to help my clients. Each one has their unique challenges and needs when it comes to organizing. After seeing how well Evernote worked for me, I started thinking about how it could be a solution to some of the things they struggle with.

Here are some examples:

Evernote as a Small Business Tool

• Challenge: My clients with small businesses often print web articles and SBA (Small Business Association) information they want to refer back to. Sometimes, they’re not quite sure where to store them for easy retrieval, and they end up in piles on the office floor.
• Solution: This is where the web clipper would come to the rescue. All these clients would have to do is store the web page or article they want in their notebook, and, voila! …all would be right with the world again…and those piles would vanish into thin air.

• Challenge: One of my clients owns a hair salon and is always on the look out for new products. She has a very large collection informational materials and brochures.
• Solution: She could definitely use Evernote to keep track of new product information. She could take photos of all those materials or scan them into her Evernote account. That way, she can find them any time.

Evernote as a Recipe Keeper

• Challenge: Many of my clients love to cook and one in particular loves to print recipes…lots of them!
• Solution: With Evernote, she could keep all of the recipes in her virtual notebook and only print the ones she wanted to use at that moment, or better yet, just call up the recipe on her cell phone and skip printing altogether. I know many trees who would thank her for this.

Evernote as Trip Planner

• Challenge: Each year, another client of mine plans two family vacations. She showed me a binder overflowing with maps and “places to go” clippings. It was an awesome binder that took some time to put together.
• Solution: Now, I can tell her that she could have easily stored everything in an Evernote notebook and accessed it all on her phone while on the road.  That means less time building a binder, and more time having fun.

Evernote as Organizational Tool For Professional Organizers

• Challenge: You know, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Evernote is a great tool for us professional organizers. We, too, collect enormous amounts of information that might benefit our clients. Some of us are bloggers who want to have quick access to stuff we might want to mention in a blog post.
• Solution: Evernote would give us the structure we need to keep all of this content organized.

Evernote as Wedding Planner

I also have a very personal Evernote story. I decided to test drive Evernote while planning my wedding. As many brides do, I collected lots of information from bridal magazines and put them in a binder (with labeled tabs, of course). This system worked really well for the pages I took out of magazines, but when I found something I liked online (like wedding dresses, hair styles, and favors), I would have to print it…or as I was often fond of doing, I kept many browser tabs open. This was not so good…too much clutter on my desktop. I’m sure by now you know which Evernote feature saved the day.  You guessed it, the webclipper! Instead of printing or opening multiple tabs, I clipped my favorite web pages and saved them in my Evernote notebook. The best part was that I could access my info from any computer. I could even send all my ideas to my maid of honor using the sharing feature. Ah, I was in love…with the Elephant (the web clipper) in my browser toolbar.

What I’ve discovered is that Evernote is for anyone, the average person, even me. In fact, it’s one of the best relationships I have!  So far, I’ve focused mainly on the web clipper feature, which I love. It keeps me on track and saves a few trees in the process. And, it only gets better because now there’s an Evernote app for Blackberry. So, I can access my notes from anywhere. Yep, this relationship is going to the next level.

Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter

Check out our previous post in this series: 5 Ways Evernote Maximizes Your Organizing Potential

Part of Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter Series

I have always enjoyed figuring out ways to create shortcuts and live more practically and simply. I started working as a Professional Organizer in 2000, but I saved up my allowance to buy a label maker when I was ten, at about the same time the teacher started asking me to stay in from recess to help other kids organize their desks.

The Clutter Diet is like “Weight Watchers for your house.” We have helped thousands of people in nine countries to affordably get their homes organized for about the price of a pizza. Earlier this year our book was released, entitled The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life, available in all major bookstores. Now on to the list!

5 Ways Evernote Maximizes Your Organizing Potential

It’s amazing how this one organizational tool reinforces so many concepts that we teach our clients. Here are a few examples:

1. Evernote gives everything a home

Quick—can you tell me where your underwear is? I bet you can. Most people have a special drawer for their underwear, and most people know exactly where their toothbrush is, because those things have a specific home. We teach people that virtually everything in your house can have its own parking spot so you can find things quickly and easily. Evernote provides a home for every piece of random information you run across. Now you know where to look!

2. Evernote is everywhere

We professionals teach a storage concept called “point-of-use.” The idea is that you put the laundry soap next to the washing machine, and you store the pot holders right next to the stove or oven. Evernote works because it is available at all of your points-of-use, unlike your paper filing cabinet or even your My Documents folder. You can add to or access your Evernote data from your own computer’s desktop, from your smartphone, and from any computer via the web.

3. Evernote is great for lazy people

I always tell people that I am organized because I am lazy—I create systems because I don’t ever want to do things the hard way! Organizing reference information in the traditional ways is difficult. With Evernote, you just throw things into your notebooks, tag them with all of the related keywords you like, and search for them later. No big decisions, no guesswork, no doubts.

4. Evernote Helps You Make Quicker Decisions

All clutter, whether it consists of physical items or mental distractions, is about delayed decisions and actions. Your ability to get and stay organized is directly related to your ability to make decisions!

Ambiguous reference information slows people down because they face these questions and decisions in order to do something with it:

• Should I keep this? I don’t need this right now, but I might need it later…
• Where should I keep this? Should it be printed out and filed in my drawer? Should it be a Word document or an image file?
• What should I name this? Should I title it “Car insurance” or “Auto insurance” or “Geico?”
• How will I find this later? How am I going to remember what I named it and where I put it?

With Evernote, these decisions are no longer obstacles. You title it, tag it and forget it.

5. Evernote improves over time

I teach that the mindset of continuous improvement is one of the hallmarks of an organized person. One thing I love about using Evernote is that nearly every time that I search, I find things that I forgot I had and am delighted to rediscover. I continuously improve my data by adding better tags to notes as I run across them again. As you learn and expand your interests, you realize that there are more tags that help tie things together. Traditional paper filing systems don’t have this capability, and those systems typically begin to deteriorate immediately.

I use Evernote to…

Some of my favorite uses of Evernote include: capturing gift ideas, books to read, phone call and meeting notes, web pages, articles, tips and recommendations from friends told to me in passing, favorite quotes, blog ideas…I could go on and on…

Have you ever felt like the guy in that picture? Well, then this month is for you.

Dealing with life’s clutter, physical and digital, poses a huge challenge for many of us. Even more difficult is finding a way to get organized and, most importantly, stay that way. Evernote is here to help. All month we will focus on tips, systems, and methodologies meant to cut life’s clutter.

To help you embrace the organizer within, we’ve enlisted a number of experts in the organization community to provide some priceless guidance. Look for guest posts throughout the month filled with great ways to use Evernote to maximize your organizational potential. We’re also planning an exciting, and somewhat unexpected, giveaway. Stay tuned.

Great partners. Great ideas.

Over the past year, we’ve partnered with some great companies that make decluttering your life a breeze. Here’s a look back.

• Eye-Fi cards: Keep your digital photos organized with Eye-Fi and Evernote. Put an Eye-Fi Card into your camera, go through a quick setup process, and any photo you take will be wirelessly sent into your Evernote account. No cables. No docks. Just magic.
• Shoeboxed: Shoeboxed is a service that will scan all your business cards and receipts. Stuff all that paper into an envelope, mail it to Shoeboxed and then easily import it all into your Evernote account.
• Fujitsu Scansnap scanners: After a quick setup, a single button push sends your business cards, receipts, documents and anything else directly into Evernote. Great for getting rid of that paper clutter.
• Pixily: Collect all your papers and place them into a pre-paid Pixily envelope. Once they get your documents, Pixily scans everything into your personal online account. From there, simply click on the “Send to Evernote” button and the scans shoot over to the notebook of your choice.

How does Evernote help you organize your world? Share a suggestion in the comments section below and stay tuned for lots of great content this month.

Where do you use Evernote?

• Evernote for Windows on my laptop
• Evernote for Windows Mobile on a Motorola Q9c

Which features have you found most useful?

The tagging feature works great for me. Everything related to a client gets tagged with their name, which makes searching very simple and effective. I have found that the tagging works so well for me that I don’t need multiple notebooks to stay organized. I can just use one general notebook for all my work notes (except for business cards). The sync feature is also incredibly useful. I like knowing that anything I put in Evernote is automatically synced, backed up, and available on all of my devices.

Your Evernote story

Evernote is excellent for keeping all of the important information related to my law firm and clients in one place. I started my own law practice a year ago and found Evernote shortly thereafter. I’ve always been big on organization but never really found a system that worked for me. Before Evernote, I had a notepad here and a document there but I lacked an actual system. Evernote makes managing a lot of information for a bunch of different clients possible. An example of how I use Evernote: If a client calls I immediately start a new text note in the desktop version and tag it with the client’s name. This way I have a record of what is going on with each client call that I can easily pull up with a quick search.

I also set up an auto forward from my website’s contact form, which automatically sends a separate copy of the completed form into my Evernote account using my Evernote email address. That way the contact info and data is right there fully searchable and backed up in Evernote.

What was your last note in Evernote?

It was a text note from a client call that I just had.

Blog: Unclutterer.com
Twitter: @UncluttererTips

Where do you use Evernote?

• Evernote for Mac on my Macbook
• Evernote for iPhone

I use Evernote most often on my iPhone, and also to access the notes that I have captured on the go on my desktop computer at home. I travel a lot and have found that searching through my Evernote notes on the iPhone is far faster than doing multiple Google searches. I try to leave the house with only a small purse, and being able to capture images and notes on my iPhone allows me to travel without a notebook, pen or additional camera.

Which features have you found most useful?

Definitely the image search functionality —I often take pictures of things that I see that I think might make for a good article. When I get home, I can sort through all of these images, grab additional ideas from the Web with the clipper and get inspired to write.

Your Evernote story

I came across Evernote two years ago, but really started using it consistently after downloading the iPhone app last summer. I use the application mostly for my blog, capturing ideas, pictures and notes that form the basis of my posts, but I have also found it very useful when performing research for my forthcoming book, Unclutter Your Life in One Week.

While writing my book, I frequently used Evernote’s Web Clipper to capture information from the Web, ensuring that it would be easy to find in the future and that I would be able to access it from anywhere.

My husband is also an Evernote addict —he is currently using the iPhone application to create a list of all of his favorite words. Recent entries include: burgled, pancakes, irascible, sturgeon and pontoon.

What was your last note in Evernote?

My last note was a newspaper article that I clipped about a guy in Maine who had so much clutter in his yard that the city had to come in and clean it up. My husband’s last note is the word ‘pants‘.

Podcast #4 topics

• Evernote for BlackBerry is here! [product page]
• Phil’s UK trip [BBC podcast]
• Using the Fujitsu ScanSnap with Evernote [related blog post]
• Answering your questions: future integrations and emailing from Evernote
• How to do a Russian accent
• New ways to use Evernote

Call me!

We’ve set up a voicemail box just for you. Call us and tell us how you use Evernote –don’t forget to tell us your name and where you’re from. We’ll choose the best ones and play them in our podcast. Call +1 (347) 497-3572 and leave a message.

Any questions?

Have a question you’d like us to cover in a future podcast? Leave it in the comments section or send a tweet with the hashtag ‘#EvernotePodcast‘.

Where do you have Evernote installed?

• Evernote for iPhone
• Evernote for Mac on my laptop
• Evernote on the web

Which features have you found most useful?

Definitely the geo-location data on the iPhone notes.

Your Evernote Story

I am a BMX rider and Evernote has worked out great as a database for all my favorite spots to ride. Here’s how i do it. When I go to a new spot i take a snapshot note on my iPhone in Evernote of a ramp, some stairs, a rail, or whatever. I also jott down a few notes about the spot or any other details that I want to remember. I’ll also tag the note with “BMX” and/or “Skateable” to make finding skate friendly sites when I’m with my skater friends easy.

Now, whenever I am looking for a place to ride I just pull out my iPhone, search for a specific attribute such as “rail” or “ramp” and find the spot. Once I pull up the note i can click on the details to pull up the location right on my iPhone in Google maps. This also works great when I’m out of town visiting places i’ve ridden before and looking for places to ride. With Evernote I can search by location and pull up the spots on my IPhone.

What was your last note in Evernote

A riding spot note in Joplin Missouri. I recently took a trip to Joplin Missouri and of course I rode my bike while I was there. I tagged a bunch of spots around town and saved them in Evernote. It’s nice to know that the next time i go there I have a bunch of spots waiting for me in Evernote.

Fujitsu ScanSnap

We’re big fans of the Fujitsu ScanSnap for a bunch of reasons: it scans both sides of a multipage document, auto-rotates and discards blank pages, OCRs the text, and, most importantly, can be set to deposit the resulting PDF into Evernote. It has become an indispensable part of my workflow. Every document I have goes through my ScanSnap into Evernote before heading into the recycling bin.

Setting up your ScanSnap

Right click on the ScanSnap manager icon in the task manager and select ‘SCAN Button Settings’ (make sure that the ‘Use Quick Menu’ is not checked) In the ‘Applications’ tab, click ‘Add or Remove’, then click ‘Add’ in the next pop-up window Add Evernote by clicking the ‘Browse’ button and navigating to Evernote.exe (in most cases it is in C:\Program Files\Evernote\) Type ‘Evernote’ for the Application Name and click OK. Be sure to select ‘Evernote’ in the application drop down menu. In the ‘File Option’ tab, select PDF as the format and check the ‘Searchable PDF’ option (if available). Click OK.

Now, left-click on the ScanSnap Manager icon – you should see Evernote as the selected destination – if this is the case – you are all set up. From now on, whenever you scan a document, it will go into Evernote.

You can also use the Fujitsu ScanSnap with Evernote on your Mac. Steps are almost identical and DocumentSnap has a great blog post explaining how to set that up.

Scanning Handwritten Notes

The Fujitsu Scansnap does a great job OCR’ing printed text, but it does not handle handwritten text. Evernote can help. If you are scanning pages of handwritten notes, our image recognition can make them searchable. To take advantage of this, set up a second profile in the ScanSnap manager to scan your documents as JPEG images, instead of PDFs. Use this profile when you want to archive your notebooks and scribbles.

Using other Windows scanners with Evernote

The instructions vary greatly depending on the scanner and the scanning software you might be using, but there are a couple of general tips that should help you set up your Windows scanner to send to Evernote:

1. Find your scanner settings (located in the Control Panel, or a stand-alone program)
2. Look for a way to configure the hardware buttons on the scanner
3. Set a button to launch Evernote, by pointing it to the Evernote.exe (in most cases it is in C:\Program Files\Evernote\)
4. Save the settings and try it.

Evernote knows what to do with files sent to it from a scanner, such as images or PDFs. If Evernote is not running, it will launch and create a new note from the received file.

Evernote Podcast #2 topics

• New office! Woot!
• You can’t spell Evernote without GTD
• The glorious Evernote API [blog post]
• The new Evernote for iPhone [blog post]
• Clippers, clippers, and more clippers
• Twitter questions: server-side image recognition, ad selection, free vs premium
• ritePen integration [blog post]
• Everyday ways to use Evernote

In this podcast, we mentioned our partners Pelotonics and Curio.

Does this sound familiar: you dropped a few hundred bucks on a new digital camera and you’re using it once a month to snap photos of vacations, friends, and family. It sure sounds familiar to me, because that’s how I use my camera: rarely. That’s all about to change.

Evernote and Eye-Fi have teamed up and the results are, well, amazing. It’s now dead simple to get photos into Evernote. You’re about to get much, much more out of your digital camera.

What’s Eye-Fi?

Eye-Fi makes Wi-Fi-enabled SD memory cards, which are compatible with the vast majority of digital cameras on the market. You put the Eye-Fi Card into your camera, go through a quick setup process, and any photo you take will be wirelessly sent into your Evernote account. No cables. No docks. Just magic.

This changes everything

Think about it, you own a device (camera) that takes high-quality photos incredibly well, and you use a service (Evernote) that’s really good at recognizing text in your photos and organizing your memories. Now with Eye-Fi, your, formerly, once-a-month camera becomes an essential tool to capture all sorts of day-to-day things. Here are some ideas:

• Got back from a conference with a stack of business cards? Snap a photo of them.
• Just finished a big whiteboard session? Don’t copy it into your notebook, snap a photo.
• Just had dinner? Snap a photo of the receipt for your records.
• Doing some comparison shopping? Go to a store and snap a photo of the sales tags.
• Got a billion dollar idea sketched on a napkin? Snap a photo so you’ll never forget it.

Then, as soon as you come into range of an open wireless access point, or one that you’ve configured, the Eye-Fi card will send those photos into Evernote, where they’ll be processed, indexed, and made searchable and available on every platform and device you use. That’s pretty sweet.

Get an Eye-Fi card now. They make awesome gifts, too. Be sure to choose the Share, Anniversary, or Explore cards —these come with the web sharing feature.

Geo-location

Some Eye-Fi Cards also capture your location when you snap a photo. Once in Evernote, photos with geographic information can be easily mapped. This way, you’ll remember the “where” in addition to the “what.”

A great reason to go Premium

Today’s cameras are amazingly good. The pictures they produce are sharp, vibrant, and full of data, but they’re also quite large. By upgrading to Evernote Premium you’ll get tons of storage for all those snapshots, plus you’ll get priority image recognition, so your photos will be recognized super fast. Upgrade now.

Get an Eye-Fi card now »

The holidays can be stressful. Picking out the perfect present (or at least something they won’t hate) isn’t easy. We’re coming to the rescue. Evernote can help you give and get better gifts. No one should have to unwrap this:

Gift giving is tough. Evernote can help.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Create a public notebook and call it “Christmas Wish List” or “[your name here]’s Gift List” or “Stop Using Your Imagination, Here’s What I Want List”
2. Add things you like to the notebook
   • Clip things from the web
   • Take pictures while out shopping
   • Scan ads and articles from magazines
   • Type what you want
3. Add comments with sizes and descriptions to make it that much easier
4. Share the URL

Here’s a wish list that I created and sent out to my friends and family:
http://www.evernote.com/pub/ronoledo/Christmaswishlist

Share your lists with us

Share your public notebook wish lists in the comments section. Trust us, lots of people out there need good ideas.

Evernote makes a great gift, too

Need an easy gift idea? Give the gift everyone can use, better memory. For only $45, give someone a full year of Evernote Premium.