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by dirktheman 3049 days ago
I use Evernote for exactly this. I organized it with a couple of notebooks: Filing cabinet, Family, Work, Inbox and Templates. I have about 20 tags that I can assign to each note and I rename all notes with the date in the name so a combination of tags, title and notebook alsways yields the result I want.

A couple of takeaways: - Evernote Premium is well wort hit, it converts all PDFs and images with OCR so that the text within it is searcheable

- I scan each incoming mail item that’s even remotely significant. All bills, letters etc. go into the filing cabinet, should I ever need it.

- The scannable app (by Evernote) outperforms almost any scanner below 500 dollars. And it’s free.

- The web clipper is awesome for storing websites for future reading

- I use Evernote not only as a filing cabinet, but also as a notebook for random notes/ideas, repository for my children’s drawings, scrapbook, wish list, to-do pad, grocery list, you name it.

We’re completely paperless (only some really important papers and drawings are kept) and it’s a huge improvement in our lives. As opposed to most people, I can tell you exactly how much our electric bill is, when the last PTA meeting was, what the VIN number of the car is, the exact dimensions of my living room and where/when we bought that nice IKEA vase. All within seconds. I find it liberating how much space in my head is cleared because I don’t have to remember all that stuff anymore.

If you're interested in going paperless: https://www.jamierubin.net/going-paperless/

2 comments

As much as I hate Evernote, I still haven't found anything better yet.
Evernote app quality has gone down hill considerably in the last two years. Total shame. They really have something useful
I don't hate Evernote, but there are some things that I dislike:

- The UI on Windows is terrible. It's so much better on a Mac and I just don't understand why.

- I would like more formatting options for my notes. Even a TineMCE editor from the mid 90's has more options.

- Evernote Skitch is basically useless

OneNote is much better at these things, but the rest of the Evernote ecosystem makes up for it. I fee like there are apps out there that perform these things much better, but because I've invested into the Evernote ecoystem I won't use them.

Can you get your valuable data out of Evernote? Will you be able to read it in 20 years?
Yes, you can export all notes/notebooks as an .EXEX file. Granted this is a file extension that only Evernote uses, but there are converters out there.

Also, I keep copies of the most valuable data (photos, documents that I really want to keep safe) both offline and in online cold storage.

It also has the ability to export as an HTML file.