If you’re a lifelong Moleskine fan, you are going to enjoy exploring the new Moleskine Journal App!  Moleskine is helping you take your notes into the digital world, because as they say, “the Moleskine experience doesn’t stop at paper.”

Just like a classic Moleskine Journal, the app allows you to draw right on the pages.  Visually, the journals look the same but they allow you to handwrite or type notes. The app comes with a toolset, including a paintbrush, pencil, pen, highlighter, and eraser.  You can choose from your choice of three paper styles (plain, ruled, squared) or use paper templates (Weekly Planer, Passion Recipe Journal, Storyboard Notebook).  And if you run out of pages, you can simply add more.  It even comes with the back pocket to hold images or text.  You can learn more about their apps here.

And for those of you already using virtual notebooks, Moleskine has also created an “Evernote Smart Notebook,” compatible with your existing Evernote notebooks.  These new notebooks allow you to digitalize your Moleskine notebooks—syncing, tagging, and organizing your notes within Evernote.

What will you use the Moleskine Journal App for?

No time to handle the influx of mail coming into your office?  Wish you could focus more on building your business, attending to your customers, and working efficiently, rather than opening invoices, scanning documents, and filing correspondences?

At Innovatively Organized, we are big fans of Earth Class Mail, a service that allows you to do just that. Earth Class Mail is an online service that manages your incoming paper mail, scans it, and then sends you an electronic version.  This allows you to take all the actions you would with email—file, delete, archive.  They have a variety of products and offerings, including a Virtual Mailroom, Mail and Parcel Forwarding, and Virtual Warehouse, that make you more efficient.

In particular, the Virtual Mailroom is a great service for individuals and offices that travel frequently, enabling them to stay on top of their mail while on-the-go.  It’s especially helpful for people that want to be more paperless because it keeps physical mail from piling up at the office. They even offer scanning, shredding, and shipping services so you have more time to focus on the tasks you want to be focusing on.

How do you currently process your incoming mail?

Now that you have cleaned out your Outlook for better email management, it is time to clean-up the physical mail that comes across your desk (or ends up in piles around your desk) and limit the amount of junk mail you receive in the future. For the second phase of our three-part Spring Cleaning series, here are 3 tips to “spring clean” your physical mail and maintain it:

1. Sign up for e-statements

Banks, insurance, and investment companies are just some of the businesses that tend to send a lot of paperwork.  When you sign up for e-statements, you can considerably cut down on the amount of incoming paper.  Just remember, if you choose to receive e-statements, make sure you have a digital filing system so your email and desktop don’t become cluttered.  There are services available as well, such as FileThisFetch, that will retrieve your statements for you and file them in a document repository, like Dropbox.

2. Remove yourself from direct mail lists

Take your name off of direct mailing lists as you come across  junk mail that you no longer wish to receive.  There are a number of resources online that can help you choose what you do and do not want to receive. Some tools we suggest are the Direct Marketing Association website, Catalog Choice, and Reduce.org.

3. Create a mail center for easy processing

Setting up a mail center in your home or office is an excellent way to keep all of your incoming mail sorted and organized.  It also helps you process actionable pieces of mail more efficiently. For an easy how-to, download our webinar, Creating a Mail Center: How to Handle Bills Efficiently.

Stick with us for the final part in our Spring Cleaning series coming soon!

The next step in transforming JoAnn’s overcrowded space into a functional office was scanning.  JoAnn has been saving paper copies of her past work, as well as other reference materials, in large binders in her office.  They were taking up valuable space and creating clutter, so we suggested that she scan the documents she no longer needed physical copies of.

While JoAnn had considered this option before, she never followed through because the task of scanning that many documents is fairly time consuming and overwhelming.  Thankfully, we were able to partner with Scan-Doc to help us tackle the project.  Scan-Doc was able to convert five entire bankers boxes worth of JoAnn’s binders into electronic files stored safely on a flash drive and organized into convenient sub folders.

Many of JoAnn’s reference materials are now paperless, stored in electronic files to save space.  She told us the scanning “was one of the most exciting parts of this whole experience.  I was over the moon to receive five bankers boxes worth of scanning; it cleared out so much space and now that they’re electronic, I can use them so much more efficiently.”  JoAnn can now reference what she needs from the comforts of her computer, rather than sifting through piles of paper.

Continue following our blog for the final steps we took in JoAnn’s office transformation, as well as the big reveal of her new functional office!

Photo courtesy of Leo V. Santiago.

Special thanks to Scan-Doc for their scanning services.

Over the last several years there has been quite a bit of buzz about virtual notebooks, most notably Evernote & Microsoft’s OneNote, but what is all the hype about? Below you will find a quick overview about virtual notebooks. For more information about virtual notebooks, sign-up to attend our upcoming webinar, Virtual Notebooks 101: Maximize Productivity Without Paper.

Virtual Notebooks Defined

Evernote and Microsoft OneNote.

What can I use virtual notebooks for?

The possibilities for virtual notebooks are pretty incredible and people keep finding new and creative ways to use them! Here are a few of our favorites:

• Gathering research
• Collecting articles
• Sharing meeting notes
• Planning events
• Managing tasks & projects
• Sharing documents
• Accessing important information on-the-go

What do you use virtual notebooks for?

Are you a piler or a filer (and we’re not just talking about paper files)? Do you see piles of paper around your desk or rows of organized folders in your file cabinet?  Are there dozens of inconsistently-named documents on your computer or organized, easy to navigate folders and sub-folders?

To help you identify where you lie on the spectrum, here are common “symptoms” of both pilers and filers:

You might be a piler if…

• You are surrounded by piles of paper that you don’t want to make a decision about
• You have a year’s worth of filing that has piled up because it hasn’t been assigned to anyone (or it’s been assigned to the wrong person)
• Your computer desktop is cluttered because your electronic files don’t have a “home”
• You rely on search to locate your electronic files
• Keep in mind: Though relying on search may work for you, it is not an efficient practice when sharing and collaborating with team members.  They have to be able to retrieve files as quickly as you.

You might be a filer if…

• You consistently file paper documents and electronic files as they come to you
• Every paper and electronic file has a “home”
• Keep in mind: Just because you’re a filer, does not mean you’re necessarily an efficient filer.  You can waste time if you have too many folders, which ultimately slows you down.

Which are you—a piler or a filer?  Are you the same for both your paper files and your electronic documents?

Happy National Clean Off Your Desk Day! It doesn’t matter if you have five-minutes to clean your desk or five-hours, our team at Innovatively Organized has compiled five ways you can celebrate this productive holiday.

1. Clean & dust your desk - When you take a moment to think about everything that comes in contact with your desk, it’s surprising we don’t disinfect & dust it more often. Here is a quick how-to for cleaning your desk.
2. Control the cord chaos - We live in a world where cords seem to be coming out of our ears. Take a few minutes to purge cords you no longer use and tidy the cords that are permanently plugged in around your workspace. Read more tips on organizing your cords and cables here.
3. Place items you use most within easy reach - Create a semi-circle around you when seated at your desk to use optimal space. Take into account whether you are left or right handed and be sure to make use of vertical space by installing shelves and bulletin boards on the walls around your desk.
4. Think paperless & organize your digital clutter too - Set-up a desktop scanner (our favorite is ScanSnap S1300) and start using virtual notebooks to reduce the paper clutter. To cut down on digital clutter, download the Monthly Computer De-Clutter Checklist.
5. Nominate yourself for the Messiest Desk Contest - If your desk (or your coworker’s desk) needs a complete organizational overhaul and you live in the Puget Sound Region, nominate yourself for our Messiest Desk Contest here. Nominations accepted until January 19, 2013.

For monthly tips on productivity and organization in the workplace, sign up here.