Evernote is, without a doubt, a multi-faceted tool that can help you accomplish a lot, but when you have that kind of breadth in options and input channels, there’s a chance you could get overwhelmed. Fear not though, for we have many articles describing how you can use it in ways you may not have thought of yet.

Having used Evernote for a few years now and despite an initial fall-out when I didn’t know what I could use it for, I consider myself an enthusiastic user of the service now. Here I present a few of the ways that I use Evernote which go beyond jotting down article ideas for MakeUseOf and shopping list items.

Receipts

Not long ago, I discovered TheBirdy, an email and SMS-based financial tracking tool, which has worked great for me due to its virtually non-existent learning curve. I email or send a SMS message to TheBirdy containing my expenses and it creates pretty charts that tell me I go out too much to eat, I really need to find a cheaper place to live, etc.

To keep track of my expenses though, I also try to take a picture of the receipts for future reference and store it in Evernote using the Android widget. Evernote’s ability to OCR the image for keyword text is definitely handy when it comes to searching for items that I want to compare in price for another store, attempt to remember if I had already bought an item recently, etc.

Inspiring Design Album

I don’t know about you but I am highly interested in creating little designs for fun. I’m mainly inspired by the number of great pieces of digital art out there made with free, open-source tools, like GIMP and Inkscape. Thus, whenever I see a website with a gorgeous look or icons that look amazing, I go a little nuts in love with the design and create a screenshot of the magnificent piece with the hope that I’ll eventually be able to create something remotely similar with my amateur GIMP skills.

As you can see in the following screenshot, I even have a dedicated Evernote notebook for my collection of favorite gorgeous-looking websites, buttons, icons, etc.

Cooking Journal

In case you’re on a journey to perfecting your home-cooking strategies and recipes, here is another use for Evernote as a repository of not only recipes, but also a journal of your cooking experiences. I tend to watch quite a few cooking videos on YouTube, which of course make me really want to shop for items and try new things. As I learn new shortcuts and ways that recipes could have been improved, I jot these tidbits down on a note in Evernote, along with a picture of the item I recently cooked.

If I ever feel the need to share the recipe with my sister or my close friends, I can easily email and share the recipe as well from within Evernote.

Can you recommend additional uses for Evernote? Let us know why you love (or not) Evernote (or any of its other products) in the comments section below!