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November 1, 2005
• Vol.2 Issue 10 Page(s) 66-68 in print issue | |
Simplify Your Life Get Organized Using Technology | |
 It’s 5:30, you just got home from work, and it’s time to start dinner. On the way home, you decided tonight you want to try that new recipe you clipped from the newspaper a few days ago. All of the ingredients are in the pantry, so everything should be set. “Where is that recipe? I know I put it in a safe place so it would be easy to find later,” you say to yourself. While searching through the house looking for the recipe, you glance at your calendar and notice that your mother-in-law’s birthday was yesterday; you forgot to send a card or even give her a call. This evening is going downhill fast. You are so organized at work; why can’t you be more organized at home? But always being organized isn’t easyyour life is busy and hectic, and sometimes it feels like you’ll never have time to get organized. The truth is, you can’t afford to be disorganized. Consider these ways to use your PDA, digital camera, and laptop to simplify your life.  Life In The Kitchen When it comes to cooking, we like to try new things, but we have too much to do to slave over the stove all evening. Keeping these little recipe clippings can be rather messy, and they’re easy to lose. Sure, you can always rewrite them on a recipe card and discard the clipping, but then you’re still left to sort through a stack of cards looking for the right one. If your favorite dish resides in a cookbook, remembering which cookbook and page the recipe is on isn’t much easier. Instead of losing your sanity trying to maintain this unorganized system, consider digitizing your recipe collection. You don’t have to do it all at once; instead, keep your paper recipe cards and cookbooks that you have used for years and only digitize your favorites from the books and the new recipes you receive. Use a recipe management software package that lets you import recipes, such as MasterCook Deluxe 8.0 ($19.99; www.valusoft.com). You will need to type out handwritten recipes to import them into MasterCook, but recipes that are already typed (such as those from a recipe book or product’s box) can be scanned and sent through an OCR (optical character recognition) process to convert the scanned image into text. Many scanners come with OCR software. If yours does not, consider buying or downloading a program, such as OmniFormat (free; www.omniformat.com). Once you have the recipe in text format, import it into your recipe software program and add keywords that will help you find the recipe next time you want it. In addition to organizing your recipes using your PC and scanner, MasterCook will also let you create a meal plan for the upcoming week. Once you’ve created the plan, the software will help you make an organized shopping list that will simplify your next trip to the grocery store. Uploading your shopping list to your PDA is a great way to ensure it’s always with you in case you want to maximize your next unexpected trip to the grocery store. Even better, you can highlight items and delete them when you put them in the cart, eliminating the frustration of trying to figure out what items on your messy paper list are crossed off and which still need to be bought. Once you have all of the groceries and are ready to start cooking, print out the recipe, upload it to your PDA, or export it to a laptop to have by your side in the kitchen while you cook. PDAs with a color screen, such as the HP iPAQ hx2790 ($499; www.hp.com), work great for this. Keep In Contact Forgetting someone’s birthday is easy to do. Unfortunately, it’s not something we can easily make up forespecially when it’s a close friend or family member. Trying to remember important personal information while juggling work, social, and family schedules is no easy task. Use calendars. Online calendars can help restore order to this chaotic juggling game. Yahoo!’s Calendar (calendar.ya hoo.com) lets you upload your calendar, such as your calendar in Outlook, to the Web and share it with selected users. It can also manage recurring appointments, such as birthdays and anniversaries. With handy email reminders, you won’t have to worry about forgetting your best friend’s birthday. We realize it’s not always convenient to access the Web or carry a PDA or laptop to manage your calendar. If this is the case, consider uploading the calendar on your PC to your cell phone or iPod using a data cable and software from the device’s manufacturer. This way, you won’t have to carry an extra device, but you’ll still have your calendar and alarms to remind you of your next appointment. Keep your address book updated. We all have people in our lives that we don’t talk to as often as we should. The holidays are already a very busy time, and you don’t need the added stress of updating your address book before you send out your Christmas cards. To prevent this stress, use Outlook or another contact management program to categorize your contacts and flag them as recipients of your holiday letter. This way, when the time comes to address your envelopes, all you have to do is set up a mail merge in Word and print your envelopes with ease, knowing that the most current address is already on file. Prepare For Disaster  Although we wouldn’t wish a fire or natural disaster on anyone, no one is immune to such a catastrophe. Because of this, it’s important to be organized and prepared in case a tragedy happens to you. Take inventory of your valuable belongings for your insurance agent and your own records by snapping pictures of them with your digital camera. By saving these pictures to a CD and storing them somewhere other than your homeeither at a friend’s house or in your safe deposit boxyou’ll be able to identify items and show their value on your insurance claim should the need arise. Hopefully you’ll never need these digital pictures. But either way, at least you’re clearing their counterparts, boxes of paper prints, out of your storage closet or fire safe. You’ll want a good digital camera for a job like this: one with a strong zoom and the ability to take high-quality images. Some insurance agents require that you can clearly show detail, such as brand names, serial numbers, or receipts of more expensive items, for him to replace certain possessions in your home. Consider a lightweight camera such as the 7.2MP (megapixel) Casio Exilim EX-Z750 ($449.99; www.casio-usa.com) that is easy to carry around and takes high-resolution images. Just Breathe Our lives are already stressful enough. Take time to get organized and eliminate some of the unnecessary stress in your life. Using the technology that’s right at your fingertips is a great place to start. After all, didn’t we purchase some of these handy gadgets to help us simplify our lives in the first place?  by Jennifer Johnson
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