The Simplified Planner

Well, it should come as no surprise to you that i’m writing a post on a planner. Have you ever seen New York Minute? The Mary Kate and Ashley movie? Well one of the girls is obsessed with her planner and when it goes missing she has a mini panic attack. That would be me!!!

I live through my planner.

I breathe my planner.

My planner is basically my best friend.

Sometime in November I was out Christmas shopping and stepped into this cute little paper boutique. I was looking around, checking out the sale section, and lo and behold…a SIMPLIFIED PLANNER. This planner is one that I had wanted to try for some time, but couldn’t fathom paying around $60 for it. I had it on my Christmas list, but was able to cross it off once I realized this bad boy was 70% off. I was sure there had to be something wrong with it, or it was last years edition, but nope. Perfect condition just at a great price. So I snatched that bad boy up and come home the happiest camper. Now i’m sharing it with y’all today.

One of my favorite things about the planner is that it has metal spiral binding. When I had a Vera Bradley planner in 2014, the back would always come undone and I would have to re-bind it. Weird, right? It got super annoying, too.

I love the metal corner protectors as well. I am hard on my planners (because they go EVERYWHERE with me) and these have held up for the past 3 months that I’ve been using it. The laminated month tabs don’t bend/tear/break and I love how colorful they are making it easy to read.

The inside pocket is where I keep all my necessary papers, reminders, etc.

Such as the Group X schedule for school! I keep receipts in there too if I need them.

I use a paperclip to hold all of the pages of passed days, so when I open my planner it goes straight to today. I don’t want to spend time flipping through all the pages trying to get where I want to be.

This planner started in August, so when I got it towards the end of November I had a lot of extra pages that I didn’t need. So instead of using notebook paper, I usually write stuff for the blog on those pages. That way I always have it with me, just like my list of guest bloggers.

I also keep lists of ideas from you sweet people in my planner, so when i’m trying to think of posts I want to write, I refer back to this list….see I DO LISTEN!!! 🙂

So with The Simplified Planner there’s a daily and weekly view, and i’m super thankful to have gotten the weekly view. I feel like with the daily view I would have had too much space, I feel like it would be too much paper for me. I write a lot down in my planners, but since it is very personal I just posted one that didn’t have much written.

My weekly view shows all my appointments, to-do’s, work schedule, and schoolwork. Each of my classes is highlighted in a different color to keep them separate.

I keep track of all my workouts, too. And then occasionally I will be flipping through some pages and see one of my oh-so-funny siblings left me a note. Ps. notice the paperclip!

Before each month, there’s a monthly view. This is where I keep my blog schedule. I love this because I used to keep a separate planner for my blog and my life and I didn’t like having to carry around two separate planners. Now I have it all in one. I also like this because I can go back and look at when I posted each blog. Then, I usually check them off as I do it or I “X” it out if I didn’t post that day.

This is how a month starts, and then as I come up with what I want to write about I start a list on the side. And then depending on what’s going on, what I want to write about, what information I have or research i’ve done, i’ll place it in a box and schedule it for that day! In the above picture you can also see that I keep my monthly/fitness goals on the side because I refer to these pages a lot. That way I always see them!

The back cover page has this little quote that’s signature to Emily Ley. Love. It.

Papers, paperclips, scheduling, plans, blog posts…this is my life. Right here on these pages.

It’s time to get planning, people!!

So tell me, what questions do you?

What type of planner do you use?

Have you tried The Simplified Planner?

Let’s talk about organization today!!! One of my very favorite topics 🙂

A peak inside our game room.

I had a couple requests to see our “playroom”/”game room” and being that playrooms was Andrea’s August “Come on in!” and the Home Organization “Come on in!” was yesterday, it was just worked out perfectly to post this today. So, if you’re here for the link-up from Come on in…Home Organization scroll down some more. After you read this one of course 🙂

We’ve lived in the same house since I was in Kinder. This house is HOME. Being that we’ve lived in the same house for so many years we are one of the few homes in our neighborhood without a media room. There was no such thing when we moved into our home. It’s so crazy how things change. So…our game room was our play room, media room, spare bedroom, you name it. When you walk up the stairs, this is what you see:

And I moved towards the entrance of my brothers room so you could see a little more.

And here’s our sofa. See that corner seat there? That’s my spot for catching up on my tv shows!

Usually, I am super un-creative. This is where I call myself a left-brainer. Tell me to organize something, i’m all for it. But telling me to get creative on a school project and i’d probably rather….do laundry. Or I don’t know, something boring!

However, my mom is one of those super creative people (she was an interior designer when we were all younger and LOVED it) that it takes her so. dang. long. to finish any project because she just over thinks it or the colors aren’t right or she just doesn’t like it…whatever it is she has SO many unfinished products. However, she knows if she gives me a project it might take me a couple days but i’ll get it done. She was tired of seeing a bare wall in the game-room so she gave me the task of doing something with it. And this is what I came up with. And i’m super proud of it. *Pats self on back now*

The little pictures are baby pictures, well more like toddler pictures. And the bigger ones are pictures of us now. Funny thing is I found all “nature settings” but they weren’t taken at the same time. You go, creative Molly! 😉
I’m allllllllll about quotes. I joke about how my mom is going to hate my house one day because everything I like she usually hates. This framed quote that I found says: “The Will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.” LOVE. IT. I made it a growing up type theme. ps. this is right above my “molly corner”!

Mom’s normal obsession is usually roosters. They’re EVERYWHERE in our house, but recently she’s found a love of peacocks, I think it’s probably more about their color though.

Back in that little corner sits my keyboard from when I was a wee-little tot. And the door to the upstairs patio. And of course the computer that nobody uses, because…laptops.

Here’s the tv. This is where dad and I watch the OC, Rick, Ryan, and Mom watch Chicago Fire. You name it. Oh, yeah and that open door on the right is my room.

Now flip yourself around. You’re looking back towards the entrance of the game room.

And this is outside the door to my room. A Christmas card picture. And one to be filled above for this year!

And that totally “organized” junk closet? Yep, still there.

And that’s it for our ol’ game room. Now that we are all older and don’t need it to play, we just use it as a media room. And it works for us when we need it!

Again, if you’re here for the link-up scroll down a little more for my “Home Organization” post.

Come on in…Home Organization

As Hoda and KLG say “Hello everybody welcome to Boosday Tuesday it’s October 14th”. There’s actually no mention of booze in this post so that’s awkward. Well I guess there was just there, but not anymore. I love Hoda and KLG and I just really wanted to say that. But let’s get this organization thing going!

I laughed at the thought of my home and organization used in the same sentence because people, 4/6 of our crew is unorganized. My mom and sister are total right-brainers. Some people don’t believe in right brain/left brain thing but I absolutely do.

Mom is obviously the one who’s in charge of the house. Dad says he is, but no no no. I tell her how unorganized her pantry is all the time and she said “this is my house. leave it alone” Ma’am yes ma’am. So needless to say, our home is not going to be the most organized house you’ve probably ever seen, however I can’t pass up the opportunity to link-up with Andrea. And this being my first “come on in…” I decided to give it a whirl.

Soo…..my brothers, sister and mom being the unorganized part of the crew leaves my father and I the organized ones. I’ll prove it… Let’s go take a look in their closet. I missed last month’s Master Bedrooms (which is okay ’cause that’s pretty weird to show you my parents’ room haha) so this is my little bit of that. Here’s my dad’s side of the closet.

He has all his shirts color-coded, his pants hanging together color coded, and his dress shirts separate from his golf shirts. That’s what i’m talking about Pa!

Now mom’s side on the other hand….is colors thrown separately, a random ladder in the middle, and actually she just cleaned her closet last week so this is looking pretty good. Usually her shoes are a crazy mess. She says my organization drives her crazy. I’ll tell her about color coding my planner and she says “that’s just a sick mind.” Hahah I don’t think we’re anything alike.

and next to her side of the bed…

and her desk…

that she throws her junk on,…so she actually works from this part of the counter.

I won’t hold this against her too much because my dad does have a study that he gets to work at, and she only has that little ol’ desk. So i’ll go ahead and allow her to throw her things all over this part of the counter 😉

My mom tries to be organized, so I applaud her for that. For example, this is how she tried to organize our attic.

It’s still organized a little bit, buuuuuut now it’s like this:

crap thrown everywhere. I don’t blame her though she has 5 people putting their junk everywhere messing up “her system”. Part of her fall bucket list is to clean out the attic and then organize it by seasons. You go girl! She has our wrapping paper in a bucket when you first walk in. That’s organization, right?!

Then you walk downstairs into our laundry room (i’m not going to give you too much of a peak in there because that’s next months come on in…) but the closet is where all my brother’s baseball pants are stored with coats and shoes as well.

and our garage has my dad’s work bench that keeps all our nails/hammer/pool chemicals/etc. each of the cabinet doors is dedicated for the four of us from sports and everything.

Oh, here’s a good one. My dad has hung up all the license plates he’s had on the wall from when he lived wherever.

On the other side of the garage keeps our extra drinks that don’t fit in the refrigerators.

Our pool toys/ sports balls and gloves/ bike things

and next to the cabinets that we built into our garage for storage is our golf clubs and baseball bats.

Our pantry is a darn mess (except for what I claimed as the g-free section) so the only organized part I could find is the top shelf where extra Ziploc, parchment paper, and plastic wrap are kept, because we shop at Costco and have an abundant amount of extra stuff. That’s the way we roll.

And back upstairs in our game room closet is where we keep our board games, printer paper, card stock, colored pencils, etc. Another place to throw our junk basically.

I gave you a tour of my room and told you that one of my goals for October was to organize my closet after my brother and I switched rooms. Excitedly enough, I got started on Sunday. And it makes my heart so happy looking at my new closet. I don’t want to go into too much detail because that will be in another post (probably some time next week). However, I do want to tease you a little bit with this picture. I LOVE love L0Ve organization.

Our house is nothing like the container store (although that’d be a dream come true for me hahaha) but it’s our house and it works for us. And even though mom is a total right-brain, creative, unorganized woman I love our house and love what she does with it.

Link up with Andrea, y’all!
Ps. This week is crazy, busy week school-wise. Keep me in your thoughts as I might actually feel like making it a boozday tuesday. Midterms, finals, quizzes, tests, work, ahhhhhh.