Avery UltraTabs in my Bullet Journal

If you’ve followed me a while, you know when I started bullet journaling in 2015, I started in a Traveler’s Notebook system. Recently I’ve shifted more to using a single notebook to simplify.  In that transition, I still find myself shuffling through pages to find where I’m at, and often lose pages I wanted to reference.

So, when Avery asked me if I wanted to try some of their UltraTabs, I said sure, why not. So today I’m giving you a review of how I’ve been using the tabs so far, what I think, and ideas for what you might use them for.

Note: this is a sponsored post so they have sent me product, but my thoughts are mine and are honest – because maintaining your trust is the most important thing for me.

Using Avery UltraTabs in my Bullet Journal

When I think of tabs I think of the old school ones from college (which wasn’t THAT long ago I swear!) the traditional red, blue, yellow or the flimsy page markers in my text books – but I was pleasantly surprised by the stuff they sent me.

I chose to use the mini tabs because 1) the colors matched my usual jewel tone scheme and 2) they didn’t take up as much space. Depending on what you use them for, there is a right match for you.

My brain works by going from big to small, largest ideas to current messy planning ones – so my tabs go in descending order that way.  The first tab is my larger list that I braindumped (and would also be my annual goals or big-picture things), then down to my monthly (which I ALWAYS lose normally), to my weekly, to my dailies. The bottom-most tab represents being “in the weeds” whereas the top-most tabs are the birds-eye view pages.

Featured: Rhodia Webnotebook, dot grid

The last few weeks, as I’ve created new weeklies, I’ve been able to move the tabs to the following week, and then the dailies “you are here” tab down to the following page – I’ve moved these a few times now and they’re still sticking which is miraculous to me seeing as a lot of my sticky notes are a “one and done” kind of deal.

Over the last few weeks it’s been nice to be able to anchor into the pages that aren’t the plans right in front of me.  Often I focus just on the fires in front of me, rather than the bigger picture – so these have been helpful to quick flip to important pages.

I wrote on a few of the tabs – a few on the clear body of the tab and then on the tab itself. I usually look at the tab from the front, so I wrote on that side but the tabs are paper-covered on either side for ease of writing.  The body of the tab is still plastic-y – but didn’t smudge when I wrote on it with a gel or felt-tip pen, which can be useful in more ways than what I can imagine right now. As long as you can wait just a second for the ink to dry, it won’t smudge.

The last thing I’ll mention, because it’s really important to me, is that these are surprisingly durable.  Again, compared to tabs of my college years, these have been tougher as I throw the notebook around in my backpack with only a touch of wear and tear on the edge of one tab. As someone who can be pretty hard on my stuff, I value this a lot! (This is also why I can’t regularly use felt-tip pens… LOL)

Some other ideas for these tabs:

• Marking your big annual goals for work or personal
• Tracking your running grocery lists and errand lists
• Finding a running master list (for cleaning, braindumps/rapid log, etc)
• A quick way to find your “I’ll be okay” list for when you’re struck with anxiety
• Your monthly habit tracker or goals
• Important notes for staff meetings, or key pieces of the readings you might do
• Creating make-shift file folders
• Making things easy to find in a spice drawer, under the sink, or storage shelf
• Placing the tab more inward to create a more tab

What other ideas do you have? Have you used tabs before? Let me know down below in the comments! If you want to try them out for yourself, check out the collection here or on Amazon. (Or, stay tuned for my Giveaway coming soon!)

Jessica