How to Get and Stay Organized in 2016
Organizing. Organizing always seems to be my umbrella goal whether it’s my schedule, my books, my room, my kitchen or my life. I just want to be organized! In 2015 I really stepped up my organization game and decided to get a good old fashioned, put pen to paper, write everything down planner. Not only has it been a huge help in organizing my weekly schedule, I forgot how much I love to have an old fashioned planner! For some reason, putting an “event” or a “to-do list” in my phone just feels too tentative but if I actually write in down then I feel like I HAVE TO DO IT. And I’ve gotten so much more done this year.
The Planner:
Now finding the perfect planner is a post in and of itself. But I figured out that I like my planners blank, all bound together with the month at a glance and a week on two pages; meaning Sunday starts on the far left side of the notebook and ends with Saturday on the far right. I currently use the 12-Month Undated Compact Sunday Start Passion Planner. It has a black leather cover, book mark and a pocket on the back flap. I like that everything is together and it has an elastic to keep anything from falling out. I’ve been using this planner for about a month now and I really love it!
Cataloging My Books:
I’ve decided that the best way for my to keep track of all the books I own is to use a spreadsheet. After much research and (much to my dismay) discovering that I cannot customize a spreadsheet myself, I have found the Ultimate Reading Spreadsheet by Book Riot. All you have to do is download a copy for yourself and fill in the columns that you choose. I like this one a lot because of the amount of information that I can keep in one place. At a glance, I can tell when a book was published, how many pages it has, what genre it is, whether I’ve read it or not and what format I own it in. And, because spreadsheets are fancy, you can input the book however you like and then at the end it will alphabetize it if you like too!
Reading in 2016:
Now this is the section I’m most excited about! Ever since I’ve started reading and blogging seriously a couple of years ago, I’ve always wanted to know the statistics of what I read throughout the year. The Goodreads reading challenge does a great job of keeping track of how many books I’ve read but that’s about it. I wanted something more. I want to know how many pages I’ve read or what percentage was YA and what was horror and so on. Low and behold, I stumble across a book blog called All About Books and her spreadsheet for 2016. Don’t worry if it looks daunting at first because she gives detailed instructions on how to use it in her post. As long as you can figure out the configuration page, the spreadsheet does everything else by itself. All you have to do is input when you’ve read a book or when you acquired a book; at the end of the year it will even give you a breakdown of how much money you spent on books! The whole thing is really cool so I recommend you check it out if you want to start keeping track of everything you read and books you buy in 2016.
Not only am I really excited for the start of 2016 but I’m really excited to see how my year will end and how all the organizing will turn out! I hope this post has been helpful and will encourage you to get organized as well!
