Here are my top picks out of the things I use daily for blogging and more. These aren’t paid endorsements, but these may be affiliate or referral links for items I use regularly. But these are some of the top questions I get about products I’ve made, how I organize my time or items I use to help me complete my work.

Here’s my disclaimer about these top picks. Each thing I’ve learned to use to help me organize myself or improve what I do came with a learning curve. However, these ones are definitely worth taking the time and effort to learn how to use them successfully. In turn they save me time, mental energy and help me work smart. {You know I’m a fan of that}

Organizing Myself

Dropbox – (affiliate) What’s not to love about having a folder on every computer I use, including my home and school computer, that has all of my files just a click away? Dropbox works just like your “My Documents” folder, only it’s available from anywhere you choose to access it from. Here’s my favorite example you might connect with…

The download you found at 1 am and put in your dropbox folder will appear on your school computer ready the next morning!

No more carrying around or worrying about a jump drive. Life simplified. Everything is backed up for you automatically. I loved the free version so much that I keep all of my files for blogging, teacher products and even classroom stuff in it. I purchased the yearly upgrade so I never have to think about space. So worth it if you have loads of pictures, files or more.

Evernote – Having notes and files at my fingertips is important to me. Evernote is something I use on both my phone and computer to save information that I need to recall quickly. I use it to take notes whenever I’m at a meeting and can categorize them and everything is searchable. I use to to save information about accounts I’ve created and save backups of my blogging code there too.

Email Filters – I’m a big fan of gmail and was super excited when my school switched our archaic system over. I started using it for KindergartenWorks and love it. While I’m not a big fan of the small ‘compose window’ that is their newest update, I love having filters. To me, my inbox feels like a “task list” so I use filters to filter incoming emails directly to my individual folders so that more valuable and pressing items show up in my inbox. So, those regular emails for comments, feedback, sales notifications and social media items all go to their little houses. I get to them when I want rather then letting them demand my time. Oh yeah, and I love the extensions too – like Boomerang which lets me resend an email to myself as a reminder. {helpful bonus tidbit there, eh?}

Blogging Hints

Tip Junkie’s Mom Blog to Money Blog – (affiliate) This workshop became a huge cornerstone for helping me develop my websites. I wanted to not listen to the noise of others who are essentially trying to be helpful, but honestly more like the blind leading the blind and I decided to put in the investment where someone has results. Plain and simple, I have a plan and since I’m gonna stick with this blogging thing, it’s totally worth it.

ConvertKit Emails – (affiliate) I am in love after using Mailchimp and Mad Mimi and Google’s feedburner to send out information to my readers. ConvertKit allows me to connect in so many flexible ways that made me want to pull my hair out with any other email service. I highly recommend it!