2015 Planner Details

Last July I decided I needed to finally get organized. Adding the baby on top of owning a business (and on top of me being a space cadet) made me realize just how much I needed something to keep all my bills, appointments, work schedules, and everything in between in one place where I would remember it. So I bought myself a little planner from Office Depot. A few months into using, I knew I was going to stick with it so I invested in a Kate Spade zipper planner.

This was a small fortune ($120 on Ebay), is my first "designer" item, and it was worth every penny. I l o v e it. One reason I chose to invest in this one was because the one I was using was getting pretty loved from being lugged around in my purse. The corners were starting to bend and the pages inside were getting banged up a bit. The Kate Spade has zips around so everything is safe and sound inside. At a glace, on the left I have a gift card I need to send to my sister, two cute little cards that make me happy (and I haven't decided what to do with yet), a business card for my store, and a copy paper clips.

On the right hand side is a little tab I made that says "AaronlovesSarah", pictures, and a big note card of happiness. The pictures are from my IG account and had printed at Office Depot for a whopping total of 29 cents. The pages for the pictures I found at Craft Warehouse for $4 and had to cut and re-hole punch to fit on the rings.

The calendar part of the planner I'm using is a week on two page format calendar I bought of Etsy and had printed at Office Depot. It turns out the Office Depot Copy Center is pretty amazing. You can just email them what you want to have printed out and then they'll print it, cut it, hole punch it, basically whatever you need. If you are a small business and apart of the Chamber of Commerce you get a small business discount. What would have cost me $35 ended up costing me $14 after the discount. So yay for small businesses!

I really liked the "life mapping" color coding system so I continued with that. This allows me to see anything major at a glance without having to even open up my planner. Pink is anything having to do with Me, Aaron, or Dean. Orange is family related. Yellow is work related. Green is bills. Blue is general fun things. Purple is friend related.

After my calendar I have a few small sections for various things like Dean's sleeping and food log, store related notes and ideas, and then a section for the fantasy wrestling league that I'm apart of. As I'm writing this, I realized I don't have a section for the blog, oops! I'll have to fix that asap.

There are tons of different ways to set up an organizer but this works for me. I've found that my planner is most effective when I keep it out someplace visible. That way the moment I think of anything I need to add or check on it's right there for me. In addition to keeping work schedules and bill dates in my planner, I use it to keep track of what workouts I'm doing, small grocery lists, and projects I'd like to work on.

What do you do to stay organized? Do you use a planner? Your phone? Post-it notes?