Thoughts from this week

Notebook love

Getting ready for holidays is a lot of work! It has made me appreciate all the different ways that I use to stay (or try to stay) organised. Our holiday was booked so long ago that I have forgotten most of the details so have been going back through these, finding emails I filed away 'safely' for details that at the end of the day are just better written down. I'm finding that I have to write pretty much everything down now. I have four notebooks on the go (two for work, one for sewing, one for blogging), as well as an Evernote app on my phone.


I'm not too sure if it's because I

• have a lot more going on than I used to
• I can't keep as much in my head as I used to
• I don't deal with it fast enough
• or I just want to get better at being organised

As much as I love physically writing, I am really getting into my Evernote app. Where it trumps my scruffy notebooks is that I can take notes with photos, screenshots and even save web pages. I like having a checklist that can be gradually ticked off, and also the satisfaction of deleting things I have taken care of :) The only downside is that I have ideas spewing out everywhere now, and I am the kind of girl who likes to do everything now and have a clear inbox.

I think I also like how making checklists and writing down ideas can help you reflect on what is going on in life. Sometimes when it feels that I haven't really achieved anything useful I look back on all the ideas I had written down and see how they have changed, or have been put into action (mainly this works in my work notes). This is where the paper books are really good as you can look back through all the previous pages. Every time I look I promise myself I will be neater as I am embarrassed by my scruffy scrawls, but as I'm the only one who sees them I know I really should get over it. Or get neater. One of the two.

Finding the time to do all of these things, whilst staying on top of the more important things in life is tricky though, and this is where I also find writing things down helps. The most important thing to me is quality time with my family. In my opinion it isn't quality time if one of you is half doing something else, so writing things down is a way of getting that thought out of my head and physically putting it away. I know it's there, ready for when I am, and I can give my attention to the people who mean the most in my life.

And I do love a nice notebook. One of the reasons I fill them all up is so I can get out the other new ones I haven't been able to stop myself from buying!

Things I am looking forward to next week:

• Going on holiday. 

'nuff said.