Preppy Runner – Theodora Blanchfield

I went on a serious organization binge yesterday, and as a result, I woke up in a fabulous mood. (Clean house, clean mind.)

Clean dresser tops. (Maybe too clean? I think I need to put some flowers or something on top like my friend Emily has on hers.)

Clean countertop other than some dishes (and every water bottle ever) left out to dry.

And clean kitchen table. Those notebooks were part of the organization.

Part of getting organized is realizing what you do have that you’ve been overlooking, and I found wraps and some vegan cheese I’d forgotten about and threw some leftovers into them.

But back to the notebooks. I’m currently juggling a number of different things that require taking some notes and putting some to-dos on my list: job searching, freelancing, blogging, serving on two different Junior League committees. Most of those responsibilities require meetings, and in the past (as in, before today), I used to take notes and jot to-dos down in one of these two cute notebooks.

The problem with this system was that I would then usually end up typing up some of my notes to either send out a recap or have them in an electronic version for myself. I’d also then transfer my to-dos into Google Tasks. As I was looking at some of these notes last night in preparation for tonight’s Junior League meeting, I thought to myself that there had to be a better way.

I’ve used things like Basecamp before, so I liked and was familiar with the idea of project management software, but for my personal purposes, I had a few criteria:

• it had to have a web interface
• it had to have both an iPhone and iPad app
• it had to have notebook functionality so that I could organize projects
• it had to have a calendar tool that would integrate with Google Calendar

After a lot of Googling, and looking at a bunch of sites (I considered Evernote and Manymoon, but they were both missing things), I found Springpad and fell in love. Finally, my iPad would be useful for something other than watching movies on planes or while taking an ice bath. I plan on bringing it to meetings to take notes in this bad boy.

Below are a few screenshots, so you can get a better idea of how it works.

Here’s a shot of the home screen, with the notebooks I’ve set up so far.

A list view of some of the tasks I’ve put in so far. (You can organize this by due date, name, date added and category.)

Here’s one of the coolest things about Springpad. Let’s say you’re looking up a restaurant. You save it to your notebook, and it gives you all of those options: get directions, share on Facebook, share on Twitter, see the menu on menupages.com, check in on foursquare or read Yelp reviews.

One of the cool things about the iPhone app is that if you put in a to-do that has a location (i.e. return sparkly shirt to Flatiron J. Crew) (that’s not an actual to-do of mine because I would never return something sparkly), you’ll get a reminder if your iPhone knows you’re nearby.

Another cool thing is that it’s always free (unlike Evernote which has a premium version that gives you more storage), and its ads are supposed to be useful. (Although, I’d imagine any site would say that…) They’re supposed to be contextual, so let’s say you save a recipe for red velvet brownies. You might, theoretically, get an ad for a coupon for chocolate chips.

One more bonus? A Chrome extension, so I can quickly add notes from around the internetz.

I’ve only so far used the app to set things up, but I really do see it changing my life.

Geekiest questions ever? Do you use any kind of project management software either at work or home? What do you like about it? Or are you a handwritten note kind of person?