10 ways Evernote can make your life easier

                      Evernote

Cost: Free

Why AppHipMom loves it: Have everything at your fingertips and live with less paper

We are bombarded with so much information on a daily basis, that our minds just can’t take it all in. Add in a few kids and the amount of information has just doubled or tripled. If you’re like me, you need one place to keep track of everything with a quick and simple way to retrieve the information when you need to.

Image: Evernote Corporation

Evernote is there to remind you of everything, no matter how big or small and in the process, will organize and get you one step closer to living with less paper. Evernote is free and available across multiple devices and platforms, so you can use it on your home computer, smart phone or tablet.

There are really thousands of ways to integrate Evernote into your daily life whether you’re a parent, entrepreneur, student, blogger or CEO, but for the purpose of this post, I’ll focus on my personal experience as a parent.

1. Kid’s extracurricular/sports schedules – You get an email from the coach with an attachment outlining the year’s practice and game schedule. Instead of searching for the email each and every time, just save it in a notebook and you can access it from anywhere. Same can be said for the team contact list. If you’re like me, I’m constantly looking for these lists.
2. Photos with notes – I like being able to add notes to a photo.  It’s great for comparison shopping (especially for sports equipment–they all look the same). Just take photos of the item and add a note about price, store, etc. so that you can easily retrieve the information.
3. Web research – Whether you’re going on vacation or buying a new sofa, I love Evernote’s web clipper feature. When you see a webpage you like, simply clip it and it’ll save in Evernote so that you can refer back to it easily. I use this all the time.
4. Storing recipes – When a recipe catches your eye, whether on the web or in a magazine, just clip it or take a photo and save it under a recipe notebook.
5. Send emails to Evernote – Love this feature where you can send emails directly to Evernote. What’s more is that you can even direct it to the notebook you want. We all get those emails that contain important details that you know you’ll need to refer to on multiple occasions. Instead of searching your inbox, direct the email to your Evernote notebook and finding it will be a breeze each time. Siri can even do this for you.
6. Important Documents – Important documents such as warranties, user manuals, receipts, etc. need a home and for me, it had always been the good old shoebox, which as we all know takes too much time to search and find. Evernote makes this easy as you can simply scan or take a photo and save it in notebooks with tags for easy future reference.
7. Taking notes – Whether you’re sitting in a parent council meeting, standing in line at the grocery store or at a business conference, use Evernote instead of the old paper and pen. That way, you’ll always have it readily accessible, no matter what device you have.
8. Grocery lists – Note down what you need and even share the notebook so that your significant other can pick up everything you need.
9. Collect that thought – When that idea strikes, use Evernote to capture it so that you can run with it at a later time. Better yet, you can even record an audio message instead.
10. Group collection – Collecting funds towards a group gift and you need to track who’s paid? Evernote is a great place to keep track. Best thing is you can easily email the list, let’s say to the person getting the card so they know who needs to sign the card. Great when organizing teacher gifts on behalf of the class.

This list is by no means exhaustive, merely the tip of the iceberg. I love to hear how you use Evernote, so please share in comments below.