Planner Addict
My husband will gladly tell you that I own too many planners and notebooks and stationary products. I will tell you I don’t own enough of these things. I LOVE a good planner/notebook. There’s just something so therapeutic about having a nice clean notebook and letting yourself go that’s a bit addictive really. I enjoy being able to lay things out on paper and really see them in a way you can’t do on a phone or a laptop. I also find if I actually write something down I am at least 50% less likely to forget to do it.
I currently plan across two planners. Well, sort of. I won’t lie, last cycle I didn’t get my planner out at all because I was so down and despondent. So to try and take some control back, find a bit of reason and purpose I got my planners back out this cycle. And thank goodness I did. You see, before treatment even began I had ordered myself a new diary from Personal Planner.
Personal Planner allow you to customise the inside layout/colours and what went in the back. It cost me about £30 and I love it for planning my day to day life with the family and kids – which is super complicated at the minute keeping track of everyone.
But the ability to have room to make little lists per week, for general To-Do purposes or planning the weeks meals an shopping items we mustn’t forget is so super simple and easy to track, and I just don’t have to worry about forgetting to “set it up” which lately is a definite plus.
Personal Planner make it so easy for you to pick and choose how you want your diary to look and feel too, it’s really much more flexible than I’d ever expected and I would definitely do it again – without hesitation.
I thought I’d treat you to a quick glance at some of the blank entries in my journals so you can get an idea of what they look like on the inside – what a lucky lot you are!
I chose a fairly standard monthly layout in my planner, I like the boxes, they give me plenty of space for the major events and it’s a fast access layout for quick cursory glances over what’s what for the month. I also have a note section down the right hand side so I can add in extra notes – bills due that month or similar.
And, a much more basic weekly too, everything as you’d imagine in a standard journal – except I added half lined/half clean boxes for a little doodling fun if I fancy, and weather tick boxes just for fun really. But the BEST part of my weekly layouts is that bar at the bottom.
These little bars along the bottom are what keep my week together. I have room to note down a meal plan, to-do’s of the week and extra listing space plus some extra notes.
These are SUCH a boon to family life, all in one space, all in the week in which I’m planning them makes it easier to set a realistic schedule for the week.
My Personal Planner even let me pick what went in at the back, and I chose some colouring pages, dotted paper and the following year at a glance. All super handy – or in case of the colouring, just some fun for me, a little bit of relaxation and time out when I fancied.
The thing is though, at the time of purchasing my Personal Planner, it was a bit of a leap for me. You see, usually I am a total Bullet Journal fanatic. I adore the flexibility that comes with it, that you can’t really go “wrong” with it, can decorate and embellish it to your hearts content if you want to (and I loved making mine pretty). It’s great for tracking things and making the most of your time and prioritising products. But, for day to day life with the family it was generally overwhelming in the end.
If you haven’t heard of Bullet Journalling it’s what I’d call an “Analogue scheduling method in a digital era” which sounds really up itself, but it’s actually very simple. It can be done in any notebook and bent to fit your every whim and need of a planner, everything in one place catalogued by a contents page. You can be as fancy or as simple as you like with it too. If you’d like to check out what Bullet Journalling is in more detail then check out Bulletjournal.com.
Previously, my bullet journaling has all taken place in a Leuchterrm 1917 Journal which you can find on amazon, it’s dotted and comes page numbered and with a contents and key area all ready to go, but with everything being as it is my energy levels couldn’t handle a traditional plain notebook journal, I just wanted something to fill in and go along with me, but with room to expand and enjoy too. Luckily someone on a Facebook group devoted to Bullet Journaller’s on Facebook (I know, I know but those groups are handy!) shared that they had got themselves the Scribbles that Matter Bullet Planner. I was really intrigued by it and had a good look at it online and ummed-and-ahhed over getting it too, but in the end gave in and got it.
So I decided to set things up differently, I love creative projects and I’ve actually had this little space sitting around for months with me wondering exactly how I wanted to deal with it, what I wanted from it. In the end I kind of decided to just start posting what I fancy writing about and seeing where it goes.
But having a blog does require a bit of planning for someone with two loads of baby brain plus chemo brain and opiate brain on top of that and so I decided I would start to use my amazing Scribbles That Matter Bullet Planner for this. It comes with drawn in undated monthly, weekly and daily spreads plus pen testing space, space to write down internet log-ins and note space etc. Plenty of space to fill in what you want and doodle too.
It’s perfect for me to track my ideas, note them down make a link back to the contents so that nothing gets lost and I can attempt to be a bit productive. Here you can grab a look at all the inside layouts. The key and colour code is so helpful, it enables you to get your organisational freak on and not lose track either! The yearly tracking space is great if you are doing anything like weight loss, are a keen runner and tracking your times, or even are an aspiring blogger tracking their posts and content (not me… promise).
I love having separate monthly and weekly layouts, it enables me to just pop the most important things out to view of a month then into my weeks go the little things that change from second to second in life. I find it just keeps things a bit more concise and clear.
The monthly layout comes with space to decorate your header, two columns for tracking so you can split between personal/work for instance and a handy tracker – great for anything from weightloss to water consumption, that kind of jazz
The Weekly layout is split up nicely with times and black boxes plus doodle space. This is usually the space that gets the craziest for me. Between myself, Tom and the kids plenty goes in here, gets moved around etc.
Then there are the daily layouts, which I use as journal or idea boxes, a place to make a to-do note or that kind of thing. You know, the minutiae of life in the moment sort of stuff.
And then there is the fun stuff! The pen testing page, a page for mindfulness when you need it and even somewhere to make sure you don’t forget that blasted password for your bank for the 50th time etc
Well! Well done if you made it through this post… I warned you I’m an addict and it’s become quite the labour of love to put this post together. I’ve really enjoyed doing it – so if you are still here, thanks for humouring me <3
Oh, and if you have seen anything you like or you fancy it, you can follow my Pinterest board on Bullet journalling with all the bits I love for my journalling in it, I’m adding stuff all the time, so it’ll be a lively follow, promise!
