10 Must-Have Apps to Keep You Organized at Work and Home!

As an entrepreneur, you’re probably juggling a thousand balls in the air right now.  You’re likely creating new revenue streams and crafting social media content, while simultaneously figuring out what to make for dinner and what Valentine’s your sending into your kiddos class next week.  (Side note – I’m thinking of going with bubbles with a tag that says “you make my heart pop.” Thoughts? 😉 ).

Staying organized plays a huge role in helping you keep all those balls in the air.  And let’s face it, I’m sure all of us can probably use an extra tip or two when it comes to this topic.  That’s why I rounded up 10 of the top apps to keep you organized in life, including both your business and home life. These apps will help you streamline tasks, eliminate unnecessary clutter, and remember important notes – all to ensure you maintain a more productive and less stressful lifestyle.

10 Must-Have Apps to Keep You Organized

1.  Unroll.me

At the beginning of the year, I embarked on a journey to declutter my email inbox.  Do you know how many emails I had in my inbox?

173,000.

What the heck happened there?!?!

Granted, “only” about 11,000 were unread, but that is still absolute insanity.

I did make it through ALL of those and got my inbox down to zero, and since the beginning of January I’ve been working on reducing what actually comes into the inbox.

A big portion of that?  Random emails I signed up for at some point in life.  You probably have done these too.  Sign up for XYZ to get this free guide or sign up for our email list for a coupon.  Those add up quick!

An app like Unroll.me will help you reduce this clutter email that arrives in your email inbox. You can easily unsubscribe from unwanted email lists that you no longer have an interest in seeing.  I mean, when I started going through my email inbox, some of these email lists were sending out SO many emails – it’s no wonder everything got out of control.

You can also place wanted subscriptions into what’s called a rollup.  This places all those email newsletters you do want into one condensed daily digest – versus hundreds of individual emails hitting your inbox.

This is an easy way to get your inbox organized so that you don’t miss any of those actually important business and personal emails.

To get it:  https://unroll.me/app, available on android and iphone

2.  24me

This app to keep you organized is essentially a calendar, to-do list, notes, and reminders – all in one place.  It integrates with Google Calendar and shows any of your calendar events within the 24me app, so you can see everything in one spot.

I’m personally more of a pen and paper person when it comes to task lists, but I know most of you probably prefer digital!

Curious how you might use it?  Here are some ideas:

• You can set reminders to pay bills, and include a link to that company’s website so you’re able to quickly pay when the reminder pops up.
• Link it to your social account like Facebook so you don’t lose track of friend’s birthdays. (Note – I was never able to get mine to link properly, but maybe you’ll have better luck).
• Add tasks to sections for “the upcoming week” and “later”.  Both of these are really helpful when you’ve got tasks that need to get done at some point, but aren’t urgent.  It’s a way of getting items out of your brain and into some sort of queue so they actually happen at some point.
• Set reminders to email people (contacts are available from your email accounts) for follow up with potential clients, brands, etc.

24Me can also send alerts to remind you of your daily to-do list. It helps get you organized in life from daily to-dos to personal finances, and everything in between.

To get it:  https://www.twentyfour.me/ , available on android and iphone

3. Pocket

Do any of ya’ll have a bad habit of automatically starting to scroll through Instagram or Facebook when you pick up your phone?

It can be a major time waster during the day, and something that I find doesn’t always make me feel good.  A lot of times scrolling through Facebook either gives me comparison envy, or I get sad/angry about a certain news story or political argument.

Rather than go down the social media rabbit hole, Pocket can be great for making your short time breaks more productive. This app allows you to bookmark and save links for things you want to check out later in one easy to access spot.

Stumble across an article about SEO, but no time to read it while you’re working on a project?  Did someone send you an interesting link that you need to check out, but no time for it right now?  Want to keep that language learning website handy for easy access?  These are all perfect things to add to Pocket.

Then, when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store or while waiting to pick your kiddo up from school, you can break out your phone and go right to Pocket.  Read up on those articles to learn more about a topic that impacts your business or personal life – rather than scrolling aimlessly on social.

(Side note – don’t get me wrong, you can do productive things on social in these short time frames too!  I’m just talking about the purposeless scrolling).

You can also use Pocket for pleasure (that sounds unintentionally dirty).  Let’s say you enjoy reading celeb gossip online – but find you’re wasting time reading them during your work day.  That’s another scenario where Pocket is great to use.  Get ‘em all in one spot there, then after the kiddos are in bed – you can break out the glass of wine and read all your saved links in Pocket.

To get it:  https://getpocket.com/ , available on android and iphone

4. CoSchedule

If you are an online entrepreneur, I think CoSchedule is a key app to keep you organized.  It’s an all-in-one platform for an editorial calendar and social media scheduler.  Essentially, I’m able to see what social media messages I have scheduled out for the day, and schedule any additional ones that I might want to add in on the fly.

I fully admit that I use CoSchedule more on desktop than the app version – I find the functionality and ease of use much easier on desktop.  But the mobile version is great for seeing what is scheduled to go out that day and make aany last minute adjustments.

You can read a full review of CoSchedule here.

To get it:  https://coschedule.com/r/o57501 (referral link), available on android and iphone

5. Trello

I was a trello hold out for a long time, but I finally started using it recently and I L-O-V-E it for blog post planning.  While I use CoSchedule for more of the large-scale editorial calendar planning, I use Trello for the nitty gritty of each blog post.

Trello can be used for more than just blog posts; it’s great for any kind of project management.  Within Trello, you can create “boards” that focus on one topic.  Then you can create “cards” for different tasks or to-dos within that board.  Each card can also contain a checklist of items to complete.  You can then create columns, which might be a certain level of completion, different priorities, different dates, or however else you want to use them.

Here’s how I use it for my blog planning.  Each “board” is each of my different websites.  Each “card” is a blog idea that I want to write about.  Then, I have columns set up for the different steps of planning.  For recipe posts, the columns are:

• Blog post ideas
• Recipe developed
• Photographed
• Content draft done
• Done with social shares scheduled
• Pins scheduled in tailwind (post-publish)

You can see some examples from my board for one of my sites, Dairy Free for Baby, of the first and third columns with their respective cards:

As I start to think through big picture planning on CoSchedule, I start to put the upcoming content I need to write about into Trello so that I can track where I am with each post.  It’s really helpful to stay organized (especially since I often batch recipe development and photographs, so I may have a bunch of things photographed at one point but not yet written the drafts yet).

Trello has both a mobile app and desktop version, so you can use whichever you feel more comfortable with.  And of course, you don’t have to limit it to blog planning!  You could even use Trello to organize a home project, like remodeling your kitchen.

To get it:  http://trello.com; available on android and iphone

6. Google Drive

Back in 2011, my entire apartment burned down – with my computer inside.  I didn’t have a cloud-based backup and I lost everything I owned.

That was definitely the kick in the butt I needed to set up a backup option!

I’m actually surprised how many people don’t use Google Drive’s sync and backup option, because we use Google so much for everything as is.  With Google Drive, you can have folders that sync between your computer and the cloud.

From the mobile app perspective, this lets you find any of your documents in the Google drive app, anytime!  Super helpful if you need to quickly check a file on the go, or make a quick update that you just thought of.

To get it:  https://www.google.com/drive/download/backup-and-sync/, available on android and iphone

7. Cozi

Keeping your personal life organized can be just as helpful as keeping your work life organized. Cozi is one of the ideal apps to keep you organized in your home life!

Your entire family can share access to a family calendar, a to-do list, and (so helpful) a grocery list – here’s a screenshot of a sample one:

The grocery list capabilities are probably my favorite features.  Here are some highlights:

• Everyone can add items to the same app-based grocery list and then you can bring it up while you’re at the store.
• The grocery list also has Alexa integration, so you can tell it “Alexa, add milk to my grocery list” – and boom, it’s added.
• You can look at recipes within the app and easily add all the ingredients to your grocery list with one click.
• You can add categories to your list – i.e dairy, fruits & veggies, etc. – to make shopping quick and easy.  It wasn’t super intuitive how to do this at first, but I finally figured it out the other day.  You just need to type the category in capital letters in the “add item” spot, and it’ll automatically make that a category.

It’s also a helpful app simply to allow your entire family to be on the same page with life. As your children get older, you can easily use Cozi to help your teenagers know when they have an appointment or other important events. Cozi has also helped married couples stay on the same page with the kids doctor’s appointments or sports games via the ability to share information between both users of the app.

To get it:  https://www.cozi.com/ ; available on android and iphone

8. LastPass

I’m sure you can’t be the only one that deals with this:

Site: Enter password.

Me: {enters password.}

Site: Incorrect password.

Me: {enters password.}

Site: Incorrect password.

Me: {enters password.}

Site: Incorrect password.

Me: {clicks button to reset password.}

Site: New password cannot be the same as previous password.

It’s enough to drive anyone crazy! 😉

Whether you want to use the app version or the desktop version, LastPass is the key app to keep you organized as far as password management goes.  Many sites are now requiring so many stipulations to create a valid password – like that it must include a lower case, capital letter, funky character, so many letters, etc etc – it’s definitely not easy to remember them all.

LastPass will help ensure you’re always organized with logins for any website you include in your account.

To get it:  https://www.lastpass.com/ , available on android and iphone

9. TripIt

If you travel a lot, whether for business or pleasure, you’ll want to use TripIt.  All you need to do is forward your travel confirmation emails (flight, hotel, activities, etc) to the app’s default email – [email protected].  The app will create master itineraries with all your information in one place.

What’s great about this app is you’ll be able to access confirmation numbers, addresses, etc – even if you don’t have data service.

The basic version is free, and they have a premium version for $49/year that offers additional benefits (like real time flight alerts, tracking frequent flyer miles in one spot, etc).

To get it:  https://www.tripit.com/ , available on android and iphone

10. YNAB

I’m sure you’re probably aware of the options out there for keeping business finances organized, like Quickbooks (either self employed or online simple start are great options for entrepreneurs depending on your needs) or Freshbooks.

But what about keeping your personal budget organized?  That’s where YNAB – you need a budget – comes into play.

Essentially, YNAB is a zero-based budget method for organizing your personal finances.  You give every dollar a job in various categories, like your bills (i.e. “mortgage”) and your other expenses (like “groceries”, “household expenses”, etc).

As you spend, you keep track of these what’s coming out of each category.  Let’s say you allocate $100 for eating out this month, and you get to the end of week two and only have $10 left.  If your gal pal wants to go out for brunch, you are able to take a hard look at what’s left in you’re eating out category – and either reschedule brunch for next month or invite her over for a DIY breakfast spread.

YNAB makes it easy to keep your finances organized via sticking to your budget.

To get it: https://www.youneedabudget.com, available on android and iphone

There you have it, the top TK apps to keep you organized!  Whether you feel like you’ve got a good handle on most of this but just need a little extra help – or you’re trying to dig your way out of disorganization chaos! – I’m hoping at least one of these apps will help you.

Share with me:  Which of these apps to keep you organized are you planning to try out?  What other organization and productivity apps do you love?

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