Life Well Lived: Let's Pretend I'm Organized

I received my next question for BlogHer's Life Well Lived series. It is:

What are your favorite resources (Products, Apps, Books, Websites, etc.) to help you get organized?

I would love to tell you that I'm the sort of person who has an app for her grocery list and her entire family's birthday list organized in a cute card folder. But I would be LYING. I am a fairly organized person, but I don't use anything special, for the most part. Here are my tools.

1) Notebooks -- I don't like to mix my notes. I have currently a notebook for work, a notebook for my YA novel, a notebook for my new novel, a notebook of marketing ideas if either novel finds purchase and a notebook for The Writers Place, which is a local nonprofit arts organization for which I serve on the board. I get twitchy if I have to make a note about one in another, because then I'll forget I did it. I realize this is a little weird, but it works for me. When the work notebooks get full (which happens once every month or two months), I put them on a shelf in my office. When they are four notebooks old, I recycle them, because seriously, if we haven't used that idea yet, we probably won't, right?

2) Grouping Like Objects -- This is really the only way I survive. Shoes only live in closets. Swimming suits only live in certain drawers or hanging in the bathroom. Jewelry is all in one place. New mail is in one basket, mail to be filed is in another basket and bills to be mailed are in a third file. All the travel-sized toiletries are in the same bag all the time, and I just grab it when I have to go on a trip. My husband travels a lot for business, and I recently got him some travel bags so he can just have a bunch of ties that go with everything all the time ready to go in an instant. We have a place where we keep coupons so we try to grab them before we go to the store or out to eat. If I have to spend time looking for something, it's a fail -- life is too short to be turning your house upside down all the time.

3) Excel Spreadsheets -- My friend Jodi turned me on to using Excel for personal stuff way back in 1997. (She used to be an accountant.) Now I have a Google doc of the paint colors on every wall in our house, because seriously, if you need to touch up and you don't remember the color? NIGHTMARE. I have a Google doc for our monthly budget. I have a Google doc of my novel submissions. I have a Google doc of family addresses. If Google crashes, I will die, but it won't matter, because so will the Earth.

4) Outlook Notes -- I use Outlook notes for stuff I really should remember but never, ever do.

5) Post-Its and Notepads -- Grocery lists and daily to-do lists. I throw them away the minute they are done. I stick them to the steering wheel of my car while I'm driving because I am so absent-minded, I can forget something on contact. Yesterday I had a check to deposit, I had it on a Post-It in my car, and I STILL forgot because I was talking to my daughter and just automatically drove home instead of going to the bank. 

6) My Friends -- I have friends who just know stuff. Foodie friends, bookish friends, grammar freak friends, stylish friends, friends who know how to garden, friends who know what I wore to BlogHer last year -- you get it. Friends are very good for storing all that information you'll never remember. Just call in a lifeline if you don't know if maxi dresses are still in. OKAY, THAT WAS A SERIOUS QUESTION. ARE MAXI DRESSES STILL COOL?

Do you guys all app out or are you like me?

Over at BlogHer, Alicia from Get Buttoned Up has a loooong list of apps and things that can help you get organized.

And, as always, when I subject you to this sort of post, I want you to win something. This time it's an iPod Touch!