My Primary Planners for 2018

Hello my friends, and Happy Wednesday! It is in fact a very happy day here because we have FINISHED with Crackerjack's college applications! Well - I'm done with my part, anyway. He still has one essay to finish, but other than that we're good! And so now, we wait ... :)

Well today I thought I'd share a little about the planners I'm using for 2018 - and as the picture above would suggest, there are quite a few! But really, there are three primary planners I use each week to keep on top of "what's what" in my life. And here they are here!

My homemade seasonal planner is in the middle, and it is flanked by my two Day Designer planners. The one on the left is my original Day Designer, and on the right is a NEW planner I bought last month (also made by Day Designer). I hemmed and hawed over this one for quite a while because I really didn't want to add one more tool to my planning repertoire - but, I decided to give it a try because I think it will fulfill the one area of planning I was missing!

Ok, here are the three planners set up at my kitchen counter - aka command central:

Now how about a closer look at each one?

First, my daily planner ...

This is the 2017-2018 (mid-year) flagship Day Designer. It's my third DD in three years and I can honestly say it is my most valuable planner. I use it EVERY day without fail, and if you've seen my Instagram then you know I work the heck out of that spread!! This planner is filled with planning pages for every day of the year as well as monthly calendars. (Weekends are combined into one page, and while I wish they weren't, I understand this keeps the size of the planner manageable.)

I use my DD for keeping track of the nitty gritty of my daily life: Where am I going? What am I doing? What had I better not forget? I list the night's supper, the day's spending and our current seasonal homeschooling theme. I use my DD for managing those everyday household tasks I need to see to remember even though I could probably do them in my sleep (and wouldn't that be something?). I write these chores in the time slots where they're best to be done. Also in the time-slotted column, I list appointments, classes, therapy sessions, etc. and in this way I "see" my day in chunks of time when I look at that agenda all filled in. I wrote a very detailed post about using this page in this post here if you'd like to know more about how I've made the DD work best for me.

Next we have my newest planner, one that shows one week at-a-glance:

This is a 2018 Day Designer for Blue Sky Weekly/Monthly Hardcover Planner (Black Stripe), and I found mine at Staples. But first, a quick word a about Staples ...

Staples is one of those places I find reasons to visit more often than is truly necessary, but such is my addiction to office supplies. Oh sure, we might only need more copy paper ... buuuuut ... I'll just see if they have any new post-it designs or maybe my favorite Frixion pens are on sale while I'm here.

Ahem.

To be honest though, I'd been wanting a weekly planner like this for a while. Though I've used other week-at-a-glance planners before (and my homemade seasonal planner does in fact have a day seven-day agenda as part of its weekly spread) none were in a vertical format like this. I like seeing the days lined up side by side with all the commitments laid out in a row. This view gives me a good feel for just how busy our week will be.

So long story short, I splurged and grabbed one of these nifty planners on one of my Staples runs ... and told Bill to knock one of my Christmas gifts off his list. 😉

I plan to use this one as seen above in a standing fashion, so that the whole family can see what's what for the week. I am tweaking how I use the boxes outside of the agenda columns because it would be very easy to repeat a LOT of the information I'm writing elsewhere in my other planners. So stay tuned on how I'm working all that out!

Ok, now for the last of my three top planners for 2018 ...

My homemade seasonal planner! :)

This planner is divided by months and each month has its own planning calendar, menu calendar, overview and then four or five weekly spreads followed by a few event planning pages. At the beginning of the planner itself I have pages for mapping out annual homeschooling goals, housekeeping routines and seasonal brainstorming. This is the planner I grab when I'm jotting down a date to remember. I like a big monthly spread so I made mine span two pages! And I lined those large boxes so I'd be able to fit in a lot of writing and still keep my handwriting neat.

This is the planner I use over the weekend to get a grip on the week that's on its way. I like to get a feel for the week - not just how busy it will be, but where we are in the year, and how we're observing the season at that time. For example, this week's seasonal theme is "winter stars" and that is a nod to Epiphany as well as the clear bright skies at this time of year. I like to look at the feast days and choose favorite books to read and plan special meals to savor ... and of course, I love making plans for crafts and comforts that connect my family with the season in a meaningful way.

Now ...

Any one of these three planners could be used on their own, of course - and I've definitely given serious thought to doing just that. Despite all appearances, I really don't like to have too many tools in my planning mix! But for me this all seems to work. I don't mind juggling the planners, because for one thing, they're fun - but more importantly, each one is used in its own way and allows me to assess unique areas of my/our life. By keeping all these planners near one another I can easily switch planning modes - seasonal/monthly, weekly, daily - depending on what kind of information I'm seeking or recording.

I will say this ... I have been known to give up on planners when they stop working as well as I'd hoped. All you have to do is comb through my calendar/planner archive to revisit many planners and systems that have since fizzled! But my flagship Day Designer has truly proven its value over the past three years and I am as eager as ever to order my new planner during the March launch.

Psst ... the new covers will be revealed next month!

The DD weekly planner is new and a novelty right now but will it prove to be too repetitive? Will it serve my family well, keeping everyone in the loop? Will I come to rely on this planner as much as I do my flagship? Only time will tell ...

And as for my homemade planner, well ... that is a labor of love and something I just feel compelled to create. It gives me a platform for planning the kinds of thing one might not find the room for in a traditional planner. Much of this was done in a binder before I made up this planner but I really love having it all in a convenient spiral-bound book. And I keep just tweaking that planner! One day I'd love to get it to a point where I'd be confident in offering it for sale ... and I am getting closer to that. (I think!) Bill has been exploring options at Etsy and Amazon Handmade for me. I'm going to give it all some earnest thought this winter and see if I can't get something pulled together for a late spring/summertime offering. So here once again I find myself saying ... stay tuned! And look for a mailing list to go up sometime soon(ish) for those folks who might be interested in purchasing a seasonal planner such as this. :)

Ok, now let me wrap up ...

(Don't laugh but I had meant this to be a "quick" post - though I'm not sure there is such a thing here at my blog!) 

In my next post I'll share a spread from each of these planners all filled out. I would like to show you how I use each one in different ways and where I do find some overlap. And in other blog news, don't forget this Sunday I'll be brewing up a pot of midwinter's tea and announcing the winner of my Homemade Planner giveaway! (All the details on that can be found here.) And I haven't forgotten we have a book study to get back to! Our discussion of Mitten Strings for God will get back on track this month - I'll have some dates to share very soon. :)

Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday my friends ... see you here again very soon!

p.s. In case you're wondering what all the other planners are in that first picture - on the bottom is my gardening binder, resting on that is my home management binder and at the very top of the stack is a lovely notebook I'm trying out as a bullet journal. :)