Creating Your Digital Sanctuary: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building A Home Base in Notion

Build the ultimate digital workspace for work and life with Notion. Learn how in this guide.

In my last post about Notion, I had a poll that asked what you’d like to learn next about the app. The result was “How To Make A Home Base in Notion”. Here is my guide to creating a useful Home Base that will help you accomplish your goals and stay organized.

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Creating a new page for your Home Base

On the very bottom of the lefthand sidebar is a button that says “New page”. Click this button to create a new page.

This is going to be your Home Base. Some people call it a personal dashboard.

Pick a title for your home base. My home base is just my name, but you can call it whatever you like.

Deciding what to include in your Home Base

The next step is to decide what you want to keep track of or keep handy. Write your list out; you can even write your list out in Notion if that’s easiest for you. This list will be personal to you, but here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Movies on your to-watch list

• Books on your TBR

• Information about your children and/or pets

• Cleaning and house chores list and schedule

• Favorite recipes

• Hobbies

• Your career development

• Things you research frequently

• For fellow writers - your story bible

• Activism/Volunteering efforts

• Vacation plans

Break up the things in your list into sections that make sense to you. For example, in my “Home” section, I have everything relating to the home, including things I want to remember about my pets, my cleaning schedule, favorite recipes, movies and books to enjoy, plus other things of that nature.

Use the command “/heading 1” to create headings for your sections.

You can organize your headings across the page by creating columns. Columns are made by dragging one of the headings to the far right of the heading you want to be the start of your row of columns until you see a blue vertical line. You can add as many columns you want to a page.

I like to then place a divider below each heading. Underneath the dividers is where I place the pages that go in that section.

How to add pages to your Home Base

Add the pages to each section below the dividers. These pages will depend on the information you’re trying to keep track of. If you wrote your list out in Notion, you can turn entries on your list into a page by going to the left hand side of your entry, clicking on the six dots, going to “Turn into”, and then selecting “Page”.

If you’re starting a page from scratch, all you have to do is type “/page” and hit enter or click the selection with your mouse.

How to make your Notion appealing to the eye

Once you have things set up, it’s time to decorate your Home Base.

I like to head over to giphy.com and pick out my favorite gifs in the color scheme I’m aiming for. I love purple, so I chose a purple theme for my page, but you could also do a mix of colors or go for the whole rainbow.

One thing you can try on giphy.com is typing the color you’re looking for in the search bar (you probably need to keep it pretty simple, with words like red and purple instead of chartreuse and burgundy) and scroll through the results. All you need is the link for the gif, you don’t need to bother with downloading it. Just save the link, right click where you want to place the gif, paste the link, and then select “Embed image”. Voila!

To edit the size of the gif, just place your mouse over the image until you see a black bar just inside the right and left sides of the image. Click on one of the black bars and then adjust the size of the gif. To change the alignment, hover over the image again until you see five boxes in the upper right hand corner of the gif. Click the second from the left, the one that looks like a double patty burger with a dropdown arrow next to it. Then select your favorite alignment.

Another fun way to get images to use on your Home Base is to make images in ArtBreeder.com using their “Collager” feature. Saving the images the free way will make the file small enough to be uploaded to Notion if you have the free account.

Have any favorite quotes? You can add them to your page using either /quote or /callout options to highlight your favorite quotes. I personally prefer the way /callout looks because you can have a little icon—even a custom icon—next to your quote, and your can change the color of the callout to match the rest of your theme. The /quote just has a line on the lefthand side of the text that has color options to match the rest of your theme.

You can even change the color of your text throughout your page to match your theme.

You can add an icon or a cover to your Home Base. If you don’t like any of the many available icons, you can always find custom icons or make your own. Same with covers.

Final Thoughts

With its flexible structure and powerful capabilities, Notion is the perfect platform for creating a home base that can help you stay focused and productive. And it’s easy to use (don’t get overwhelmed by just how much Notion is capable of doing). On top of that, it’s fun to decorate your Home Base in a way that brings you joy. Play around with different layouts and color schemes—there’s nothing that can’t be undone in Notion.