I am to notebooks what Carrie Bradshaw is to shoes. If you’ve never seen Sex and the City, I’ll break it down for you: Carrie will be walking down the street and spot a pair of heels in a window. Despite having a closet at home overflowing with shoes for every occasion, Carrie will decide that these shoes are the missing link in her life and possessing them will make her whole. I’m the same way with notebooks, and I have a prodigious collection. Naturally, this requires some organization. If you’ve ever wondered how to organize the stacks of notebooks in your life, read on for four tips from my own wealth of experience.
How to Organize Your Notebooks
1. Separate notebooks by topic.
I use a different notebook for each topic/purpose in my life. For instance, here are a few of my current notebooks and their uses:
Purple pleather cover = daily planner/to-do lists.
Pink with flowers = dance moves/choreography (for workout purposes, in case I can’t put the DVD on).
Hot pink = wisdom from a former professor, and how I’m applying it in my life (so I remember to apply it in my life).
Superheroes = cheese notebook, because my friend – a former cheese monger – is teaching me about the wonderful (and very complex) world of cheese.
Silver with key pattern = commonplace book (I’ll get to this in a minute).
My commonplace book
2. Make a table of contents.
Even though it may seem like a hassle, number your pages and make a table of contents. You don’t have to number them all at once; you can number each page as you write on it. Not every page needs to be accounted for, either. If there are a few special topics you know you’ll want to be able to jump to, you can always just include those.
3. Color code!
I LOVE to color code. My whole life is one big code of many colors. I took a microeconomics course in college that involved the graphing of many lines on a single set of axes, and at the end of the period it looked like a unicorn threw up rainbow spaghetti on my page. Color code notebooks to organize content. What I refer to as my commonplace book contains transcribed poetry, quotes, novel ideas, advice from friends, and many other tidbits. I carry it everywhere and it has become a repository for my life. Making quotes one color and bits of short stories I’ll never finish another makes it easy for me to flip through and find what I’m looking for, or know what I’m looking at before I start reading.
David Foster Wallace organized with page numbers, stickers, and notes in the margins
4. Separate “chapters” using blank pages.
Some of my notebooks end up with thick chunks of content – flash fiction, rants, stand-up material in case I ever get over my crippling stage fright – and it can all run together, making it difficult to find a particular entry later, or calculate the page length of a given piece. If this is the case for you, consider leaving a blank page between lengthy entries. This page doesn’t have to stay blank, mind you. That’s what stickers, doodles, and stamps are for.
If you’re ready to build your own notebook collection (or are ready to organize your current notebook collection and are feeling ambitious about adding another), check out all of our really awesome notebooks. Personally, I’m partial to this one and this one.
how would you label a myriad of notebooks on the shelf? i have all my old school notes, and to make sure i retain the information, i like to go back and review. But its a little difficult to find something to place on the spine to tell them apart.
Dates