Create Spreadsheets to Manage Important Dates and Occasions

 Remember the days of having a calendar on the wall with important dates written down? It was usually next to the wall phone in the kitchen. Nowadays neither phones nor calendars adorn many walls.

Were you part of the old-school generation that had a Rolodex or business card file? Back in the day, those were worth their weight in gold. Losing a contact could mean the end of important connections.

How about spending time handwriting addresses for invitations and greeting cards? Remember owning an address book? They were usually an amalgam of sticky notes, crossed out phone numbers, and addresses mixed in with bits of paper with random addresses and other information.

Managing important dates, contacts, and other valuable bits of data has gotten easier over time. Most everyone is computer literate and most homes use smartphones, tablets, or PCs as a regular means of life. These tools can be a great way to streamline data to be more organized. Spreadsheets are a wonderful way to combine data and make it user friendly.

Note: A spreadsheet is an electronic document that uses rows and columns to store information. The information can be tailor-made and manipulated for multiple purposes.

Whether you love Excel, Google Docs, or another platform, spreadsheets can be a valuable tool to get more organized. Here are some simple ways to use spreadsheets:

Birthdays: Keep a running list of the birthdays of people who matter. Create a spreadsheet with names, dates, addresses, and notes about each person. You can easily print a mailing label to send a card or gift. You can track the gifts you send and other important notes relevant to the occasion. Add or delete from the spreadsheet easily over time.

Paying Bills: Keep track of your monthly bills in one handy spot. Create a spreadsheet detailing the company, account number, billing cycle, and the due date for each account. Monitor your balances and keep information in one space to reduce the need to search everywhere when you need simple bill pay information. This document can be very handy at tax time.

Saving Important Dates: Anniversaries, graduations, and other important dates may slip your mind. Mapping out dates and other details in one space can help you stay on top of the events and occasions you don’t want to miss.

Printing Addresses: Capturing an address and other vital information can be a great way to print labels for anything from a greeting card to directions for a visit. You may think having information on your smartphone is enough, but those contacts can get lost and a spreadsheet document is a wonderful backup just in case.

The great thing about spreadsheets is they can easily be edited. They can be stored in a cloud-based environment and accessed by most devices. They are a wonderful way to stay organized and reduce the amount of paper cluttering your drawers. Consider incorporating spreadsheets into your organizational tool chest.

 Until next time...

Lisa