5 Ways PK Helps for the Holidays

The holidays often bring on information overwhelm. We have so many details to keep track of and so much going on. Contacts, shopping, events, preparations. It's easy to forget things and lose information.

Let Personal Knowbase help you stay in control this holiday season. Personal Knowbase is a note management program for Windows. It helps you store miscellaneous text information and index it using keywords for easy access.

Here are 5 ideas for using Personal Knowbase to stay in control during the holidays:

1) Gift Idea Lists

Throughout the year, when you get ideas for gifts for friends, family, and colleagues, make a note. When you need to get a gift, check your lists first and reduce the stress of not having any ideas at the last minute. This can help with birthdays too.

Also, make a list of gift ideas for yourself for when others ask you for lists.

Personal Knowbase provides password-protection if you want to make sure that snoopy family members won't see your lists.

2) Checklists and To Do Lists

We all have lists of tasks that are basically repeated each year. Record your checklists to make these tasks easier. For example:

• Lists of preparations for events.
• Annual shopping lists that don't change from year to year, like holiday cards, wrapping paper, ribbons, and batteries.
• Lists of the best stores for various items.

3) Directions and Addresses

Store directions to houses and event locations you visit regularly, so that you don't have to ask every year. Use them to make a waypoint in your phone's map software or use Personal Knowbase's Print feature to print them out.

If you store your contacts in Personal Knowbase, you can link the directions to the contact information.

4) Travel Lists

If you travel for the holidays each year, travel preparations lists save you time and help you avoid forgetting important details. Make a permanent packing list and keep it updated as you need to add or remove items. Make to-do lists for pre-travel preparations (like setting up a security system and stopping mail) and post-travel tasks (like shutting down the security system and resuming mail).

5) Recipes

Personal Knowbase is great for organizing digital recipe index cards. Use keywords to quickly find all recipes by course, preparation type, and/or ingredients. See our previous post on Using Personal Knowbase for Recipes.

Add a note to your recipes about which potluck event you used a recipe for from year to year to avoid duplicating the same dish each year. Make a note about who liked (or didn't like) a recipe so you can repeat it (or not repeat it).