Organizing the Printables Library
Happy Monday everyone! To all my friends in US, I hope you all are having a wonderful Memorial Day. I’ve been working on a little behind the scenes project. I’ve been putting ideas down in note form for a while, and I finally jumped on the project on Friday. I thought it would be a simple matter of making a couple tweaks, adjusting a few things here and there and then I’d be done by the end of the day. Enter the total time estimate FAIL because I’m nowhere near being done. In fact, I think it’s going to be easier to just from the ground up. And folks….
I talk a lot about how systems need to be changed and update as your spaces and needs change. Organizing is a way of life, there is an ebb and a flow to it. The same goes for websites, and I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to organize the almost 200 (yes, 2 – HUNDRED) printables that are currently on here.
Now, I know how I would organize them for myself, but the things is I don’t come here to get them. I don’t search my own site for the printables, but you do. And this is where I’m asking for your help. Actually, I’m ready to get down on my knees and beg for some insight and clarity in this matter.
How would you like to see the printables organized?
If you hover your mouse over the printables tab on the menu bar, a drop-down list appears and you can see that I already have the printables organized into the follow sections
- 2014 Dated Calendar
- Kitchen Binder
- Home Management
- Personal Planner
- Holiday Planner
- Move Management
- Time Management
Some of these sections are changing and I have a couple others I want to add, like one just for half-size printables. This part, I feel, is working well. Where the mess begins is when you go onto the section pages. The current galleries with thumbnail images makes it really hard to see what is what. I’m slowly updating the pictures so they stand out a little better, but there is still an awful lot of printables on some of those pages. I have a couple ideas on how to make it a little easier to find what you’re looking for.
The first idea is to do something similar to how I’ve done the Kitchen Binder page. Break each page into sections. That’s not so bad, but that’s still a fair amount of scrolling to get to the ones on the bottom. The other idea is to make addition sub-pages where applicable, most especially in the Home Management section. So when searching for a printable using the Printables tab, you would get the main sub-menu, and then under the ones that have addition sub-pages, there would be another menu. Personally, I’m not fond of a menu after menu, but I’m just one person and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for you!
I would love some feedback from all of you, any and all suggestions are welcome. I want this space to be useful and helpful and easy to navigate, not a jumbled mess that makes sense only to me. As much as this is my happy place, it’s your place too!
