Iphone Apps
It’s no secret that I am in love with my iphone. I mean, my entire life has changed with this little device. I think of it as my personal virtual assistant that keeps me on top of everything. I have quite a bit going on with managing a very busy household of five, with three of those five being under the age of eleven.
I am not a fan of video games, which excludes quite a bit of the app world for me. My favorite apps revolve more around the day to day maintenance of my life as a Mom and blogger.
The two apps I’ll discuss today include Evernote and OurGroceries. My husband introduced me to these lifesavers. Although, I was resistant at first, I now do not know how I functioned without them.
Evernote
Evernote allows you to organize your thoughts and keep you on task, by being your personal memory
Evernote
booster. As they say on their website in big bold letters, “Remember Everything”. I either am referring to a note in Evernote or recording a new note at least 20 times per day. To do lists, ideas for my blogs, passwords, webinar notes and the list goes on. If I did not have Evernote on my iphone, all of this information would have to be stored either on a post-it note or in my brain. With the amount of activities going on in my life right now, the brain storage plan is not a solid one. 🙂
Just the other day, I was waiting in line at Noah’s bagels with my four year old and noticed a poster about saving the redwoods. I love redwood trees and decided this would be a great post topic for this blog. I have been wanting to research the “save the redwoods” effort and, because of Evernote, I just typed the idea into my phone, and did not have to think about it or try to remember for the rest of the day.
I knew that my virtual assistant would keep track of it for me and I could access the reminder when I had some time to sit down and write. Two days later, when I was looking at my Evernote notebook labeled “blog ideas”, the redwood tree idea popped up. Turns out, I had totally forgotten about that idea and was so thankful to have recorded it in the moment. Boy, I sound a little ditzy. I promise I’m not scatter brained, just incredibly overbooked, as most Moms with young children seem to be these days. ( 🙂 )
Evernote enables the user to organize their notes within notebooks. So, I have a separate notebook for each of my websites that I use to record different work I have completed on each site. This really helps give me an overview of how long a project takes and which sites need more attention. I also have a notebook for a “to do” list and a notebook with all of my various passwords. Boy, password management is a big one to tackle. I am working on putting all of the passwords onto the iphone app called 1password. I have some on there, but not all of them yet.
In a nutshell, with Evernote by your side, you can be assured that you will not forget anything, important or trivial. It frees up your brain for other activities, other than trying to remember all of your ideas that you do not have time to act on in that moment.
Just to show that I am not alone in my love for Evernote, check out these awards the app has received:
- Inducted into the Apple “App Hall of Fame”
- NY Times Top Ten “Must Have Apps”
- Winner of TechCrunch “Crunchies”
- Mashable Award
- The Webbys Winner
Our Groceries
Gone are the days of trying to remember what you need at the store.
The iphone app, Our Groceries, helps remove post it notes from your life as well. The neat part of Our Groceries is that as I add an item to my shopping list, it will sync with my husband’s Our Groceries app and update the list on his phone. So, as he is coming home from work, he can see that we desperately need bananas and milk, for example.
The app also allows you to create recipe lists. We have a chicken tortilla soup that we like to make and if we feel like making it one night, we just need to pull up the recipe and shop for those items. We also have a broccoli salad down as a recipe list among others. This really helps considering I used haul my huge recipe books to the grocery store and read the ingredients from there. Thats how organized I was! 🙂 Didn’t even have time to write the recipe down on a piece of paper.
This app works for all stores, not just the grocery store. We have lists for Target, the hardware store and Trader Joe’s. So, you can really classify and sort your items, which is very helpful.
You can download the OurGroceries app here for Free.
Please feel free to leave a comment below with your favorite apps. I’d love to hear from you!
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