Saving Everything Yet Finding Nothing

How I organize inspiration and keep my saved folders from turning into a digital junk drawer

There’s something so, so satisfying about peeking into the way someone else organizes things. I want to know how you stock your refrigerator, how you’ve laid out your closet, and what your to-do list looks like. Give me your digital systems, your handwritten lists, and your tracking apps. I need to know why you chose to put glassware that cabinet or where you keep your backstock of beauty products.

A few weeks ago,

Becca Freeman

wrote a newsletter about how she organizes her monthly to-do list in the Notes app. This single note includes errands she needs to run, items on her shopping list, restaurants she wants to visit, ideas for her podcast, and other mini-lists for thoughts she wants to catch while on the go. It inspired me to make a version of my own, replacing my former system of emailing myself every time I remember something I need to do.

Then, earlier this week,

Rachel Karten

invited social media director Byron Stewart to share his strategy for organizing social ideas into Instagram’s saved folders. It makes sense that Byron would sort the posts he wants to reference into folders for different types of creators, clever edits, and interesting interview angles, but I was still surprised by how differently we all approach organizing the things we find online.

When my desktop looks like this, call my emergency contact.

Reading those two posts made me think about how wildly personal our digital filing systems are. I’ve heard from some of you that saving inspiration digitally feels like tossing something into a junk drawer, an abyss of things that once piqued your interest, never to be found again. So it completely makes sense why sitting down to make a mood board or to start a project or to visualize how you want something to look could trigger the same type of anxiety that cleaning out your long-avoided hallway closet does. (Or is that just me?)

So, inspired by those who have come before me, I thought I’d give you a peek into what I save, why I save it, and how I organize it all so I can actually find it again later. It’s not revolutionary—no tagging, no niche programs, no complex folder systems—just gold ol’ fashioned social media saves.

I’m forever grateful to my 2017 self for setting my saved folders up the way I did because I know a lot of you started saving things willy-nilly without any real system—and now you’re stuck with thousands of images in one giant, never-ending feed. But it’s never too late to implement a new process, I promise!

I used to work for someone who saved all inspiration into one ginormous folder (I’m talking thousands of images) and part of my job was to sift through it, find emerging themes, and create a plan to turn that inspiration into something tangible. Because of this, my entire creative process was built on the idea that sometimes you need to see everything in one giant mess, but you also have to be able to focus in on parts of that mess and make sense of it. For me, finding the balance between ultra-specific and too-broad when it comes to setting up a folder system is key. I don’t want to think too hard about how to categorize something, but I also need a little bit of structure in order to find things again.

On Instagram, the folders I use most often to save inspiration are organized by medium. These are the folders I dig back into when making a mood board, and because I’ve revisited them so many times, I can pretty much remember where I’ve saved something, even if it’s from years ago. These folders are:

• BRANDING — Mostly packaging design, identity mockups, and other bits of graphic design.

• COLOR — Images I love specifically for their color palettes.

• INSIDE — Interiors, including homes, hotels, and other interior spaces.

• ART — Paintings, illustrations, collages, textile art… anything that isn’t graphic design or photography, really.

• PHOTOG — Photography of all kinds, from random iPhone shots to highly produced editorials.

• TYPE — Things that are specifically typography-related.

• FASHION — Aspirational fashion images that are more for inspiration than literal outfit ideas.

• WORDS — Text-based images, things like poems or phrases that I like.

Then we have the more practical folders, the ones I reference in my work or personal life. For work, these are:

• SIDE ORDER BRANDS — Brands whose products I may want to feature in a Side Order or Brand Snack post.

• VENDORS/EVENTS — LA-based vendors I want to remember, tabletop ideas, menu designs… basically anything related to hosting the types of events I throw.

• SHARE — Posts I might want to link to in a future monthly Specials newsletter.

• SOCIAL IDEAS — Reels, carousels, and graphics I like and might draw inspiration from.

• INTERVIEWS — People I’d like to interview for the newsletter.

For more personal reference purposes, we’ve got:

• WEAR — Outfits! These are more relevant to my day-to-day than what’s in the FASHION folder.

• BEAUT — Haircuts, mostly.

• HELPFUL — A real mixed bag: styling how-tos, DIY ideas, and various informational guides.

• FOOD — Recipes, but also aspirational food photos.

• HOLIDAY — Anything seasonal, like décor, party ideas, and Christmassy imagery.

Lastly, we have folders organized by location. If I want to remember a restaurant or hotel or shop someone posted from somewhere, I save it to a folder specifically named for that destination. I also have a folder in my Notes app with a dedicated note per place, and every so often, I go through the images in my saved folders to add them to those written lists. (Maybe I’ll do a Becca-style Notes app tour sometime…)

My approach to Pinterest is slightly more chaotic—and now that I’m organizing my thoughts here I’m a little embarrassed to show you. But we’ve made it this far! I really operate in two realms on Pinterest—my public boards and my private boards—and I approach them pretty differently.

My public boards—the ones you can see—have been the same since I signed up for Pinterest in… 2011? I’ve never renamed them or reorganized their contents, and if you scroll way, way back in any of them, you’ll find some very millennial-in-college content that I can’t be bothered to weed out. (Please don’t scroll.)

My public boards, est. 2011.

The public boards are broadly themed, and I rarely go through them individually—more often than not, I click on “All Pins” to dig into what I’ve saved. “All Pins” only shows all of your public pins, so it’s basically one giant inspiration folder across genres. But anyway, the public folders are:

• PRETTY — Anything art-, design-, or photography-related.

• HAUS — Interiors, exteriors, and anything related to a physical space.

• CLOTHES — Both aspirational and relatable looks.

• THINGS — Objects—mostly things I want to buy or include in a newsletter at some point.

• BEAUT — Anything related to my hair, face, or nails.

• POSTCARDS — Mostly photos of cool buildings in faraway places.

• FLEUR — I haven’t saved anything to this board in four years but… it’s flowers.

The name of my home board is the street I live on, so…

My private boards are much more specific and are usually created for a particular intention. Sometimes they’re collaborative folders with clients or friends; often they’re filled with things I don’t want to see when I scroll “All Pins” (like, those ugly Pinterest graphics people make). They really run the gamut:

• VARIOUS CLIENT PROJECTS — I have a board per brand identity project, where I save specific inspiration to reference for the mood boards I’ll ultimately make.

• VARIOUS PERSONAL PROJECTS — My own brand identity or the print issue of this newsletter, for instance. Pasta Girlfriend has a secret board, too.

• MY HOUSE — A folder with a board per room, filled with both atmospheric inspiration and more practical ideas—like DIYs and specific items I might want to buy.

• FOOD — I hate how food images look in “All Pins”, so anything edible goes in a private folder.

A lot of times the things I save in the private boards are things I originally saved in my public boards, but reorganized in a way where I can see them in context with other references pertaining to that project. For instance, I might have a vintage restaurant menu saved to “Pretty” (I really need to change these names) but I’ll also save it to the board I made for a Pasta Girlfriend event alongside specific table decor ideas, floral arrangements, and photos that set the mood.

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There you have it, a snoop around my pretty simple, good-enough-for-me digital inspiration filing cabinet. From there I might make a mood board, use something I’ve saved as a jumping off point for research, or just continue to scroll endlessly in a sea of beautiful things. Whether you’re someone who tags all your inspiration in a network of folders or your desktop looks like that tangled mess of screenshots up top, I hope you find your own version of this that works for you, too.

x

Ali

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