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 🙂