I got a new planner in August, and I’ve really loved using it the past several months. I’ve always used a calendar and I’m a pretty naturally organized person. Meal planning, appointment tracking, to-do lists… that’s practically one of my love languages. A few years ago, we had a large family calendar hanging in the kitchen, but when we moved into the new house I didn’t really have a good space for one. So I attempted to make a family binder (using ideas from Pinterest) with a calendar section and otherwise go digital, storing everything in my phone calendar – and it was a miserable failure!
I was forgetting things I needed to do and running late for appointments. Apparently, writing things down really cements them in my brain. On any given day, I can usually close my eyes and visualize a monthly calendar and tell you which days I have something scheduled – IF I’ve written it down. So around the time school started, I was on the hunt for a paper calendar again, but I wanted something portable. Something pretty enough to spread out on the kitchen counter, but small enough to tuck in my purse and take with me to appointments (which really helps with scheduling a follow-up, let me tell you!)
I chose an Erin Condren Life Planner – there are entire blogs, fan clubs on Facebook, and hashtags on Insta devoted to EC. When I first started looking for a paper planner to buy, it was a little off-putting actually. Folks are hardcore about their #ECLP! It is wild. (Full disclosure: if you use that link, you’ll have a chance to sign up for a $10 off your first purchase coupon, and if you make a purchase, I’ll get a small referral credit as well.)
There is a monthly spread with tabs, followed by weekly spreads – mine is the horizontal option. EC also makes a vertical layout and an hourly layout, as well as a simple monthly calendar with notebook pages if you don’t need daily planning space.
If you start looking into them, you’ll see that a ton of women combine their love of scrapbooking or journaling with their love for this coil-bound calendar. It’s awfully pretty, but that style wouldn’t work for me. I have bought stickers (because I’m telling you, there’s like a cultofcondren and anything you normally plan around in your life? There’s a sticker for that! It’s easy to get etsy’ed away!) but I don’t cover every square inch of my planner in stickers, washi tape, and whatnot.
This week has been a bummer for a #planneraddict, though. Nearly everything I wrote down got cancelled or rescheduled! Ah, snow… so pretty and so problematic.
School has been out for two days and I highly suspect it will be out tomorrow, too. I was planning to take Jonas to his first concert on Friday – Lecrae at SKyPAC in Bowling Green! – but the venue has rescheduled the event. We’re hoping we’ll still be able to see Jonas play basketball and that celebrate the birthday and graduation of a couple of dear friends, but this is the South. If we get as much snow as the top end of the predictions suggest, we may be hibernating until June!
