It’s worth noting that this isn’t a paid sponsorship or an affiliate post. I just love Milanote that much!
There are so few things that we come across that are exactly what they claim to be. Milanote is one of those rare gems. So what is it exactly and how can it help you? Let’s take a closer look…
What is Milanote?
“Milanote is an easy-to-use tool to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards.” – Milanote.com
With any project, whether it’s re-decorating a room, renovating your kitchen or designing a whole house, Milanote can help you to organize your ideas into boards so that you can see if the overall look is what you want it to be. If you’re anything like me, your brain gets flooded with ideas and you have to narrow them down and weed things out. These boards are perfect for that. Oh and did I mention, it’s free to sign up!? Glory! Let’s look at what this baby can do!
How I Use Milanote for Planning Our Custom Home Build
As you can see, I have created one main board called KHM Custom Home and then within that board I have created a board for each room or area of the house. So it’s like one big box that contains all of the smaller boxes- much like a house. On this main board I have added a note to remind us and our builders that any image with a red line above it is an item that we have already purchased so that those things can be removed from our overall budget. I have also uploaded a pdf file of our actual house plans. (More on that in just a minute) I have added inspiration photos that show the look that we want for the home overall, linked 2 wood flooring options (see tip below), and added cabinet hardware that will be used throughout the home. Anything that will be used consistently throughout the house, I have included on this main board.
Tip: With supply chain issues being what they are, we decided it would be a good idea to have backup options for things like flooring, tile etc. In the event that our first choice isn’t available or will be too delayed, we have a backup option.
So What Does Milanote Do?
Basically, how this works is, as I run across things that I love on the internet (pinterest, instagram, shopping sites etc) I can add them to their appropriate board. (Milanote has a free extension that you can install on your internet browser that makes adding items to your boards super simple!) So, if I find a couple of dining chandeliers that I like, I just add them to the dining room board. Same goes for furniture, decorative accents, curtains- anything that we need to pull that room together. Then when I open that board I can see how all of those items look together. I may find that one of the fixtures that I thought was great no longer works with the table that we picked. I can delete what doesn’t work, keep what does and know what I need to keep shopping for. It really helps to be able to see all of the pieces in one place to determine if they work together or we need to keep looking for a particular thing.
How Can Milanote Help Our Builders?
One of the (many) wonderful features of milanote is that we can share our boards with anyone that we choose. We have given our builders access to these boards so they can look at them any time they need to. It helped them during the initial pricing phase too because they could see the things that we had already purchased and could clearly see the direction that we wanted the build to go. We can also write notes to them on the boards and they can write notes back to us if they need to. Another method of communication is always nice! I have also uploaded our actual floorplan files so that they can open them if/when they need them- that’s helpful if they are out making purchases for the house but might not have the paper plans right in front of them. They can open the link right on their phone or tablet and access the plans any time they need to!
I can also upload sketches for cabinetry to the boards so that the cabinet makers can have access to them whenever they need to refer to them. You can see an example of that below on our office board. Eric is in charge of all things technology and electronics so he has added notes for where data drops will be needed as well as where a tv will be mounted in that room. This information is also on the actual paper plans but it never hurts to have a second source for all of that. Along with lighting, doors, furnishings and some decorative items, I have added a sketch of what we’d like for our built-in cabinetry.
The pdf sketch of the built-ins can be downloaded from the board or opened to view it as shown below:
SO, as you can see, Milanote is a really valuable tool whether you’re planning a small re-decorating project or working with a builder on an entire home build. And, it’s totally free to sign up, so why not give it a try?
Until next time…
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