Twitter: @joshuazerkel

For some of us, January is the month of resolutions and fresh starts. For others, it’s Get Organized Month.

We’ve enlisted the help of Joshua Zerkel, a Certified Professional Organizer and the president of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers, to help us get our act together.

Joshua on Evernote

If you are tired of trying to keep track of every detail in your life, it’s helpful to look for tools that can offload some of that mental overhead. One of the best tools I’ve found for doing this is Evernote – it’s a fantastic (and powerful) note-taking tool, which helps to capture all sorts of different types of information. I’ve implemented Evernote both in my own business and with my clients in a variety of ways to help them streamline some of their processes and save them time. Here are a few ideas for how you can do the same:

6 Ways Evernote Can Boost Your Productivity

1. Snap your scrap paper

Instead of trying to rework how you do everything, try using Evernote in little pieces. Start by taking snapshots with your cell phone of all the scraps of paper that you have scattered around your office – your sticky notes, the backs of envelopes, scrawls on napkins, etc., and then put them all into Evernote where they can be searched later. You don’t have to stop using your written notes right away, but over time, you may find yourself needing them less and less as you transition to using Evernote more and more – especially as you discover how handy it is to be able to search your notes and actually FIND what you’re looking for!

2. Capture the whiteboard

Meetings with other professionals can be productive, but taking notes can be a real chore. At your next meeting with a client, vendor, or consultant, instead of frantically writing down notes from the meeting and trying to copy everything that’s written on a whiteboard, try snapping a photo of the whiteboard with your phone, and send that pic to Evernote. Since Evernote can read the handwriting in the photo, you’ll be able to easily search for and refer back to that whiteboard later on when you need it.

3. Share the love

If you work with clients and you’d like to share information with them, set up a shared notebook in Evernote dedicated to that client. In it, you can capture clips from web articles they might like, snapshots of resources that they could find useful, ideas for upcoming meetings or sessions, or links to online applications they may find helpful in their day-to-day lives. This can be a HUGE value-add to your clients and the people you serve – not only are you introducing them to a new tool (Evernote), but you’re populating their notebook with stuff they’ll be interested in.

4. Wrangle the receipts

I work a lot with clients on financial organization – keeping track of the money is super-important in the world of business and in life. When you’re busy and on the go (and who isn’t?), it can be a challenge to keep track of your receipts and other expense items. Instead of losing your receipts or stuffing them into a box, bag, or drawer, try snapping pics of your receipts and send each of them to a “receipts notebook” in Evernote. That way, they’ll all be captured in one central area.

5. Tie up your travel

If you travel for your business (or even just for pleasure), create a notebook dedicated to each upcoming trip. In it, you can keep any notes you have about an upcoming meeting or trade show, along with the agendas, location, maps and any venue information. Also, this is a great spot to keep details about your travel – flight confirmations, hotel and car reservations, and the like. You can even collect clips about restaurants, local attractions, and other fun things that can help you enjoy your trip more.

6. Centralize your storage map

You can also use Evernote to keep track of the storage in your home or small office. Take snapshots of everything that’s on each of the different shelves and inside of the different drawers, cabinets and containers in your storage system. Now, instead of having to dig through a shelf, drawer or closet, you can just go on your computer and quickly scan and review what’s there – making it easier for you to access and retrieve those things that you actually want at the moment when you need them. If you have multiple people in your business, you can share this note or notebook with them as a team reference.

Any one of these strategies can help gather your information in a central spot, and can definitely help save you time. Try a few different ways of using Evernote to boost your productivity – I think you’ll be surprised at how much it can help you!

Evernote and Organization

• 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

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

—
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.

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‘.