how to stay organised (part two)

a few months ago I shared the first part of my 'how to stay organised' showing you the three different diaries I use to organise myself and keep track of what needs doing. today I'm going to show you the notebooks and folder I use to organise my notes and ideas. I used to just have about four different notebooks in different places (one by my bed, one in my bag, one in my studio) which I just scribbled notes and ideas in as and when they came to me. this worked fine for a while, until I needed to find something I'd written down and couldn't find it! so I decided to reorganise my notes.

I now still have a little notebook that I carry with me to jot notes down in, but once a week I transfer important notes from this into my main folder of ideas (more on that below.) I still keep all of my notebooks to refer back to, but I organise my notes within the folder to make them easier to find when I need them.

 within my folder I have dividers labelled for the main areas of my business - wholesale, product ideas, craft fairs and markets, photos, promo ideas and press, workshops and talks, and blogging. there's paper  in each section to write comprehensive notes, which means everything is neatly organised so when it comes to creating a new product range I can just look at the ideas I've been jotting down all in one place. it's also great when I need ideas for blog posts - I always have some written down as a backup!

how do you organise your ideas and keep track of your notes and thoughts? do you do it on old-fashioned paper like me, or do you use apps instead? I love my iphone and ipad to bits, but I just love jotting notes down using pen and paper (it also means I can use my terrible doodling skills!)