Dear readers, it was time.

As you may remember from my recent videos, I went on the road this summer and lived minimally out of my suitcase for a few months. And it was liberating! I didn’t realize how much I could thrive with having so few physical possessions on me. Of course, I still brought along my beloved paper goodies: 2 journals, a few books, a couple of pens (…okay, a lot of pens) and some different colored post-its. It was so freeing only having 1 main journal to house my innermost thoughts and creative ideas. And it didn’t take long before I completely forgot about all of my other journals and notebooks stored away in boxes back home.

How I’m Lightly Embracing Minimalism

Now that Alex and I are back in Corsica, unpacked and settled into our cozy apartment, I realized how many diaries, books and paper stationery products I actually own.

It’s….a lot. 

And to be honest, looking at the number of notebooks I use on a regular basis is overwhelming, to say the least. I have one journal for my spiritual messages, another for my tarot card pulls, another for video scripts, another for quarterly goals and big-picture dreams, another for poetry, several for class notes and plenty others for short stories I’ve written.

Unpacking my boxes last month made me realize how necessary it was for me to declutter my mind and physical space and create new organizational systems for my ideas. It all got to be just too much. It takes a lot of mental and physical space to hold onto an assortment of papers, notebooks and diaries.

What can be really overwhelming in our lives is having too many things that serve a similar purpose.

This is why I’ve been loving Milanote: all my plans and creative ideas and creations are in one place.

Getting Organized As a Creative & Going Minimal

With the amount of writing I do every day, I realized it wasn’t sustainable any longer to constantly be writing in journals. As a creator, I’ve used several different online tools over the years like Evernote, Trello and the good ol’ Google Docs, but these tools are too….linear. As a creative, I wanted a place where I could play and get messy.

I wanted to be able to design and create a space that’s organized and tailored to how I personally think and create. And what I really wanted was a giant canvas where I could put all my different thoughts, ideas, pictures, color palettes, to-do lists, inspirational quotes and reference links.

The Next Web explains Milanote as “the Evernote for creatives.”

How I Use Milanote to Plan My YouTube Videos and Projects

Creating anything can be quite messy in the beginning. Often my Youtube videos will start out with a basic idea and then maybe a visual or sentence will appear after that. But having a blank canvas where I can build my ideas and the structure of the story makes the creative process feel more spontaneous and free-flowing.

I like to draw, sketch, highlight, color code and brainstorm ideas using flowcharts when I’m in the early beginning stages of creating something, and that’s why I have always loved using physical notebooks so much.

Milanote is basically a digital version of this, which allows me to embrace my natural creative self but also fulfill my desire to be more minimalist in my paper clutter. It’s like a custom board with digital sticky post-its. Or a digital bullet journal that you can customize to your needs!

Unlike a lot of organizational tools online, Milanote divides projects into mood boards. I’m not limited to where I put my pictures, thoughts and documents – I can structure it however I want! It’s not super linear like using Evernote, for example, which I love! And the simple drag-and-drop feature makes it super easy to add different elements to my boards.

I’m Still Old-fashioned & Paper Obsessed