Introducing...dum dum DUM... my planner!!!

The wonderful, inspiring bloggers have at likemotherlikedaughter.org have been talking about organization and planner recently. I love this subject and am pretty OCD about organization and planners. So I thought I'd share my planner with you, which is a labor of love. And please do share how you get organized, too.

Last year was the first year I made my own planner on Microsoft Word and this year I think I finally got it right. I modeled it after Mama's Notebooks here. It took forever to make charts for each week and put in all the right holidays and liturgical dates I want to celebrate, but it is so worth it. I also type in our friends' and family's birthdays. This year it was easier to go back and just move things around, since it was done. Last year I made a big A4 size planner, but this year my A5 size is much handier. And I make one for my hubbie too, even though he is not 1/16th as excited about it as I am. I'm not even sure he uses it acually...

Anyway, I printed it all out myself this year and then got the spiral and cover done at a copy center. So worth it. Each week opens up do a chart to write what I have to do according to time of the day and meals (which I don't use much... I have a master calendar in the kichen with meals). Plus a blank page at the bottom for general notes. This is just like in Mama's Notebooks.

I was inspired by friends we visited in California to make a family schedule. And it has changed my life. So I included it as the first page in our planner. I also included a picture of Jennifer Fulwiler's pyramid, which is wonderful.  

And I have a blank page at the beginning of the planner where I keep sticky notes of more general to do lists or ideas. So they don't clog up the weekly spread.  

I just have ONE planner. That is already more than I can handle.

Finally, I just recently got this idea of organizing my "to do" papers with clothespins from this likemotherlikedaughter post here. It really is so much easier to look at papers this way, I love it. I am hoping to convince my hubbie to use this clothespin system, too. It just makes you feel better about yourself, you know? :)