New Ideas and How I Keep Them Organized

It has been said that creative minds are rarely tidy. I usually find this true for me. I can speculate over furniture placements for a single room for hours, ideas toppling one after another through my mind, weighing pros and cons, mentally measuring and visualizing. And if I open my mouth to give voice to them, the words come out messy in unfinished sentences. My Hubby is a big fan of this obsessive state(NOT!).

My computer has almost that many tabs open whenever I am "working." Poor thing. 

And how does one keep track of all those browser tabs? The answer is one that Steve and Blue would be proud of: a handy dandy notebook.

I use a notebook and a daily planner to help me keep track of ideas and a time frame for their accomplishment. Along with what housework I should work on that day and what I want to make for supper. Because I really will forget to fold the laundry, what with all that thinking of rearranging bookshelves. And keeping children alive.

If you take a peek inside of either one, you will see many notes in the margins, scribbled sketches, room layouts(that are definitely NOT to scale), questions to ponder, snippets of blog posts, and marked out self-imposed deadlines. You may notice that my method of organization is completely UN-organized, with many half-finished ideas and sentences in no particular order.

You will also see a lot of lists that I haven't looked at twice. I love to make lists. Usually I can write things down, never look at it again, and still vaguely remember it. Something about that act of writing it down helps to solidify an idea or plan in my mind. Lists help me keep my ideas straight and organized.

It's definitely not a foolproof method. I am notorious for ignoring my schedule and seeing merely guidelines to be changed at whim, but it helps. I'm still working on it.

Coffee helps too.

What are your favorite tried and true methods of idea organization?