Best Results Organizing

LIST LOVE

It’s a common practice that when you want to be productive, you make a list. A grocery list. A packing list. A to-do list. What’s a recipe except a list of ingredients followed by a list of tasks? What’s an instruction manual except an ordered list of behaviors for achieving the optimum outcome?

List-making has always been popular, even among celebrities whom you might think would have “people” for that. (Paper Doll likes to imagine that “Meet Paper Doll” is on George Clooney’s bucket list.) One of Johnny Cash’s intriguing lists has been making the rounds on the blogs:

Novelist Umberto Eco has written philosophically about The Infinity of Lists and Liza Kurwin has captivated readers with Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Collections of the Smithsonian Museum.

Lists are so central to the concept of organizing our intangibles — like time and tasks — that one of the first mnemonic devices I conceived as a professional organizer was List LOVE: Lists Organize Virtually Everything. Getting everything out of our heads and onto paper (or our digital screens) helps ensure that nothing will fall through the cracks.

The problem with creating our own lists, however, is that while we are experts on our own lives, we don’t always have perfect memories or full control over our creative thoughts. Creating a list ensures that we get everything we’ve thought about into more solid form, but what about things of which we haven’t conceived?

We make lists so we don’t forget anything, but surely we recognize that not every option is available to us on demand.

ENTER: LISTPLANIT!

ListPlanItis the five-year-old brainchild of Jennifer Tankersley. It’s a membership-based site designed for those who live for lists as well as those who need some help in figuring out what goes on which lists to make life easier to lead.

THE LIST OF LISTS

ListPlanIt offers up 700+ lists, browsable by topic — everything from business planning to time management, moving to travel planning, student living to holiday planning. Need a template for a sign-in sheet for your book club? It’s there! Want help putting together a budget for an anniversary party? Look no further. The following grid gives you an idea of the breadth of major categories.

Of course, those are only the main categories. Under Family Matters, there are sub-categories for Health and Safety, Responsibilities, Activities, Family Management, Baby and Pet. From the serious (medication trackers, babysitter instructions and chore charts) to the delightful (tracking visits from the tooth fairy), ListPlanIt anticipates a wide variety of listly needs. ListPlanIt offers elaborate, meticulous lists to help with the myriad tasks of parenting, from packing a hospital bag for labor to potty training to teen responsibility checklists.

Although many of the lists are designed for family use, ListPlanIt knows that we cannot (and do not) live by carpool alone. Under the Business Planning category, there are sub-categories for Management, Social Networking, Marketing and Finance, and under those umbrellas, lists abound to capture every detail of modern business life, from time sheets and blog post planners to mileage logs and budget worksheets.

Some issues bridge the work/life divide, like Time Management, so ListPlanIt offers up customizable daily, weekly and monthly planners, to-do lists and long-term goals charts. And money mavens Suze Orman, Jean Chatzky and Nanette Duffey would certainly be impressed with ListPlanIt’s profusion of Financial Management lists, from budgets and worksheets for funding goals to tax form managers and charitable records.

When ListPlanIt began in 2007, there were 200 lists. By the time Paper Doll gave it a brief review in 2009, that number had more than doubled, and new lists continue to appear. Recent debuts have included lists for attending conferences (budgeting, packing, preparing and scheduling), a craft inventory supply checklist, a comparison shopping list for supplies and many more.

And the lists go on.

MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS PRIVILEGES

ListPlanIt has three levels of membership, all of which guarantee members one year of full access to all lists (from any computer), without having to put up with pesky ads or pop-ups.

Lists and planning pages are generally in template form, and the type of membership determines how/whether the forms can be manipulated.

Personal/Family Print Memberships grant full access to all lists for $20/year. (For the budget conscious, that amounts to thirty-eight cents per week!) Members may print any of ListPlanIt’s lists as many times as they like. At this level, there are no downloads, and any manipulation, revisions or additions must be done by hand on the printed page.

Personal/Family Download Memberships grant the added ability of downloading forms and typing directly into them before using and/or printing. This option is more eco-friendly and is better for those, like Paper Doll, with dubious handwriting skills. The download membership is $30/year.

Professional Memberships are geared towards professional organizers and productivity professionals. For $50/year, professional organizers can use the lists to help their clients master the art of list-living.

All credit cards are accepted and processed through PayPal. Once you become a member, you’ll be able to log into your account and access your lists. ListPlanIt even has a guarantee of satisfaction.

CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT…BUT SATISFACTION BROUGHT IT BACK

Are you curious but not ready to try? To get a feel for what ListPlanIt is all about, you can access a handful of sample lists at the trial page.

LISTING SOME BONUSES

Whether you’re a member or still checking things out, ListPlanIt offers up a hearty spate of resources, including:

• The L.I.S.T., a  weekly opt-in email newsletter, filled with tips, sample lists, links and resources for a more organized life
• An articles page, rich with guidance on topics from preparing your child for school to building a better budget
• Jennifer Tankersley’s famous List Mama blog offers up timely and timeless posts to augment your knowledge and share a bit of the list life
• A growing series of video tutorials for maximizing the benefits of various lists and planners
• An online directory of professional organizers who are also ListPlanIt members, for those who would like a little extra guidance in optimizing their use of lists

SUPERSIZING YOUR LISTS

Individual lists serve specific, disparate purposes, but ListPlanIt has taken it a step beyond with a series of ePlanners — type-enabled PDF versions of whole ListPlanIt categories and planning pages. The ePlanners are immediately downloadable, so there’s no waiting, no shipping costs, and no need to print unless you want to. Just type your revisions right into the PDF and save for future use or reference.

Each individual ePlanner is $7, and ListPlanIt offers ePlanners for the following categories:

• Baby
• Birthday
• Club
• Contacts
• Family
• Financial
• Holiday
• Home
• Meals
• Memory
• Moving
• Personal
• Planner
• School Memories
• Student
• Travel

THE CONTEST

Paper Doll has partnered with ListPlanIt for not one — but TWO — giveaways. We’ll be giving away one ListPlanIt print membership (value: $20) and one ePlanner (value: $7). Here’s a list of what you need to know to enter:

1) Tweet and/or Facebook–post about this contest with the hashtags #PaperDoll and #ListPlanIt, and include a link to this post.

2) Use the comment section below to share what kinds of lists you like to make.

3) Tell us which ListPlanIt ePlanner you want the most, and why.

4) Note your Twitter ID or Facebook profile in the body of your submission comment. (Note: OnlineOrganizing’s blog system doesn’t allow clickable links in the comments, so remove the http:// from any link you provide.)

The deadline for submissions is Monday, February 6, 2012 at Noon, EST. Two winners will be chosen randomly and announced in early February.

Good luck, and happy listing!