Using Evernote for Personal Car Maintenance

[Sathish Kumar 0]

Hi Guys

I have been trying to organize my life with evernote. I use it for home as well as work. I recently purchased a new car and thought of keeping records/maintenance/reminders with evernote. Initially I looked at some PC software like CarCare. It is quite good but I dont like the idea of a standalone software though it is tailor-made for that purpose and comes with full functionality like reminders, export to file, etc.,

Is there a way to get something similar out of EN? I welcome your suggestions and tips. Will be posting my research too.

To begin with, I have captured the purchase documents and insurance files using PDFScanner for Android with my Samsung Galaxy S3 and uploaded the same to SugarSync, got Public links to those files and put them in a note under my car's Notebook.

S Kumar

[jbenson2 2,147]

Anything related to my car is thrown into individual notes in Evernote with the tag Per-Car (all my personal tags begin with Per-)

The dealer I use prints out up to 7 pages of information after every visit which is scanned into Evernote.

I signed up for 4 future oil changes. I created 4 notes and changed the created dates to every 3 months as a reminder.

For reference, I have a note with the Ford maintenance schedule for my car.

Basically, I use Evernote as a bottomless pit and throw everything related to my car into it.

[Wern 246]

As Jbenson said, you could simply use a tag "car" and file all your documents with this tag. Alternatively you could create a notebook "car" which holds all your car related files. Pesonally, I prefer tags to keep the number of notebooks small, which is an advantage for several other reasons. My "car things" get thrown into the GENERAL notebook simply tagged with "car".

Wern

[Sathish Kumar 0]

As Jbenson said, you could simply use a tag "car" and file all your documents with this tag. Alternatively you could create a notebook "car" which holds all your car related files. Pesonally, I prefer tags to keep the number of notebooks small, which is an advantage for several other reasons. My "car things" get thrown into the GENERAL notebook simply tagged with "car".

Wern

I guess i need to get used to tag-ging. I am an amateur user & have been storing notes into notebooks and notebooks into stacks since that is a more traditional way of doing things. I am just too afraid that over a period of time I will lose the idea of organising if i start putting things in the same notebook.

Anything related to my car is thrown into individual notes in Evernote with the tag Per-Car (all my personal tags begin with Per-)

The dealer I use prints out up to 7 pages of information after every visit which is scanned into Evernote.

I signed up for 4 future oil changes. I created 4 notes and changed the created dates to every 3 months as a reminder.

For reference, I have a note with the Ford maintenance schedule for my car.

Basically, I use Evernote as a bottomless pit and throw everything related to my car into it.

Thanks jbenson2. I came across Meshin Calendar which could be useful with reminders. Need to look into that.

[Steve Morton 1]

I just tag everything (records, reciepts, etc) under Auto Maintenance. I also use Follow-up Then (configured for Evernote) to set reminders for oil changes. Works fine for me.

[Don Sakers 98]

Some peopole are taggers and some are notebookers. Some people are searchers and some are browsers. I think the important thing is to use the method that works best for you.

[mdenettesr 0]

I keep a "_templates - Car" note in my "Accumulator" Notebook (Default notebook, first alphabetically). For each Car (we have eight Subaru's in the family) I collect the specifics like Plate, Plate Due, Inspection Month, VIN, Primary Driver, Tire size, etc. For the Driver, I put a link to the appropriate driver's contact note (yes, there is a "_templates - Contact"). I use the same link approach for the Dealership contact, the Tire Store contact, Insurance agent contact, Etc. I have a "Garage" Notebook where the "cars" notes get parked. "Contacts" notes go in "Contacts Notebook" and in my "Library Notebook", I have car manuals in PDF format, attached to notes. Yep, I link them to the correct cars. The "garage" tag works well for all the notes, but the links are what make it terrific. Quickly jumping from the car to the manual, back to service records, and then have which oil and filter are required on the screen when I call the autoparts store on the cell is very efficient. When I arrive at the parts store, my order is all boxed! When I identify a "field" that should be in the template (let's say Engine, then I add it to the template and also put it on my "to-do-list" to  add the field to the other car's notes when I have a moment.) My templates are still a bit dynamic, but getting more useful all the time. Linking saves a huge amount of data entry. Templates make it so you can find the right piece of data faster.