So y’all know how much I love Project Life by now, and you also probably know how busy I am and that I am always playing catch up with it. But the thing is, I don’t let it stress me out at all (or I try not to) because I have gotten pretty good at taking notes. If you have notes and you have photos it doesn’t take much time at all to put together a spread. So since I’ve figured out what works for me I thought I’d pass it along.

This is the notebook that I have specifically devoted to Project Life notes. It’s a large Moleskine Cahier journal in the grid design. I think it’s perfect because it is lightweight and slim yet has more than enough pages for the whole year, it’s plain and customizable/flexible, and has a pocket in the back to store bits of paper.

So this is what I do. I use a page per week, put the dates at the top, then just take notes on each day as it happens. Sometimes at the end of the week I will write a summary at the bottom or add notes that don’t fit on one particular day. In this notebook I don’t include everything that happens but I try to only write down the stories or events that I will want to include in Project Life. I also note when I have a specific photo that goes with a story or a found paper or piece of ephemera.

This notebook is my main go-to resource when I sit down to make my spreads, other than the photos themselves. I will pull out my papers from the back pocket and lay them out with my photos, then reference my notes to see what I need to include. I rarely have a photo for every story so many times I will just write.

If I don’t have enough content or if I forget something that happens I will also reference my 5-year journal.

I am in my second year of it and although it is not specifically for Project Life and it is Meredith-centered it generally has a good overview of what happened on each day.

The last thing I use for reference is a great app called Momento. It’s a diary-writing app but the reason I love it is that you can sync all your social media feeds to it. So I always look through my feed on this to make sure there’s not some snippet that I’m missing. Also, sometimes I don’t have my trusty notebook with me or I’m on the go so I will use this app to record something I want to remember for later.

And that’s pretty much it! Let me know if you have any other questions or tips to share. :)