I am fairly new to this whole planner thing. I used to keep on in high school, and I have always had a dry erase board some where in my apartment to keep track of things like appointments and bills. But at the start of this year I really noticed I needed something to keep all the dates I have put together and organized. Because with wedding, work, YouTube, even conventions, and everything else in between, I needed something to keep it all together long term. I had dates and times I needed to remember months a head of time, I had dead lines, and projects that needed to be finished. I am a pretty organized person, I try to get stuff done early, and with lots of time to do it. But I was having a hard time managing it all; so I looked into planners,
I had seen a few YouTube that I follow use planners, as well as cosplayers. So I had a good idea on which one I wanted. But I wanted to stay in a budget because I wasn't sure if this was something I could keep doing, or if I would forget to do it after a month or so. Because lets face it, that does happen. A lot of these people make their pages super fancy, and covered with stickers, but I knew starting out I should keep it simple, get myself used to the planner first, get into a routine and see where I go from there. It was Janaury so a lot of the planners were on sale, so I picked up the "Me and my big ideas" planner (Or mambi) for udner $20, one role of washi tape, a few colored pens and took an afternoon to transfer all the dates and things I needed to get done from my notebook, into the planner.
There were things I loved, and things I didn't really like about the planner, but it got the job done. I kept it simple for the first month, I did it all in pen, very few stickers, I had no themes just writing down what I work, the meals I plan to do, appointments that were that week, bills due as well as wedding projects that needed to be done. It was simple. and after keeping to it for a month strong, I slowly starting getting into stickers. Because I had to look at this for a whole week, I wanted it to motivate me to check it every day. A few more rolls of washi, some cute star wars, marvel and other scrapbook stickers, and I started to develop a good system to my planning. I did it about two weeks at a time, because it was best for me, it helped me plan meals so my grocery shopping wasn't so random anymore, it kept me on top of chores and things I sometimes forgot about. I was really enjoying it. And thats when I decided, to check out a few sticker shops on etsy.
I went in with a budget and a list of stickers that would fit my planning needs. What I started to notice it, my planner was the issue.I liked the set up of the mambi planner, but the binding of it made it hard to take anywhere, and it made it bulky, it made it weird for me to write in it because it was hard to fold over. I liked how it was affordable, but in all honestly my "dream" planner was the Erin Condern. If I was going to invest money in cute stickers to help my planning, why not just get a good planner? Lucky for me it was a big sale on that website, because the new planners were coming out in June, in mid April the ones for the rest of the year were pretty cheap. I paid no more than $21 dollars for my new planner, the cover didn't really matter to me because I could get a new one or decorate this one if I needed. I had a pretty good stash of stickers from etsy, as well as my friends sticker shops to help me. I was so glad I got this planner because it was just easy to use, I'm not sure if its becuse it reminds me more of my notebook i used to jot stuff down in before, but i find it so much easyer to grab this planner every day, and update my lists, check off what I've done and what not.
I've noticed a lot of changes in myself with organization since I started planning. I get more stuff done/. I have learned how to better manage my time, motivate myself to do better in things like youtube, and even start using my blog again. Not to mention taking that hour or so every week and putting time into the planner, is sort of "me" time. I didn't think a little planner could help so much. Maybe I was more un-organized than I thought, What was first meant to help me stay on top of wedding tasks and other life things, has become the way I plan meals for the week, and set up my grocery list based on that. (which means we do less take out because I plan ahead.) Its motivated me to set upload schedules on both my YouTube and now on my blog. I had youtube work time, managed with my day to day work time. Even Eric will ask me to note something in my planner to remind him to do something or when something is going on
Its really helped me mange things, and I am so happy I got into planning. I wont lie, the cute stickers, and layouts do help. I've gone from very few stickers to a whole spread themed by them. I enjoy going on etsy and finding stickers and thinking of spreads a head of time. And I think thats what keeps me doing it, that little creative motivation. And I'm glad it did, because in the last 5 months planning has changed how I mange things in my life.
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