When I posted a photo of my planner page on Instagram recently, several people asked about it so I thought I’d share my DIY planner here. Other than the nice leather cover, which I absolutely love, there isn’t anything fancy about my planner. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the pretty planners, especially the floral ones, and have swooned over them for years, but the truth is I just don’t need the extra pages most planners include. (True Story: Just this morning I was tempted by yet another planner – a Rifle Paper planner…It was $38!) A couple of years ago I was inspired by my friend Marian‘s diy planner pages, which I tried for a few weeks before I started working on creating my own page design that fits the way I like to use a planner.
THIS is the leather 3-ring binder from ExtraStudio on Etsy that I use. If you’ve followed along here for a while you know I love to use binders to organize so of course I would use one for my planner too. Since my planner is something I use every day and will have for a very long time, I didn’t mind the binder splurge. As we all know some of the nicer planners are pretty spendy too and are generally useable for only a year.
Both the front and back of the binder have pockets and the front has a place for a pen or pencil.
I tried many, many different designs for my planner. I made planner pages in both landscape and portrait layouts, daily and weekly layouts, lines vs. dots, checkboxes vs. circles. I’d design one, try it for a few days, note changes to make, then try the design again. Eventually, I landed on the landscape version – with a weekly layout, for several reasons. I learned that I like seeing the week at a glance rather than separate daily and weekly planner sheets. I also like using the planner with the cover flipped back so it is easier to write on the pages.
I print the pages on quality printer paper, my top three things to do for the week and a place for blog ideas. On the bottom of the page, a place for notes and calls to make, like appointments.
There are four sections in my planner separated by these index dividers. The month section has the months printed out for the year.
The blog post section is where keep a list all my post ideas and check them off as I complete them.
The notes section is blank graph paper. This allows me to jot down quick notes as reminders and gives me the freedom to move my notes, if needed, to another binder or file folder.
I am currently keeping my past week pages in the remaining section, but I’m not sure I will always do it. I’ll keep the weekly sheets for this year before determining whether to continue in future years.
I have used Blue Sky planners for many years and still do. It might seem redundant to have two planners, but this monthly planner goes with me to appointments and meetings. It’s small enough to fit in my purse or backpack and easy to take along.
The Blue Sky planner is where I keep track of birthdays and special occasions as well as appointments. Each week I transfer all appointments from the Blue Sky planner to my current weekly sheet. Kirk and I have a shared Google Calendar, which I am terrible at keeping updated. Kirk, however, is very good at entering information on that calendar. For me, it is paper and pen all the way.
I’m sharing these weekly planning pages for free with my subscribers, so if you head to the home page and enter your name and e-mail you will receive the download in your inbox. If you’re already a subscriber, send me an email and I’ll send you a downloadable version.
Note: If this kind of planner is something you are interested in, but would like to make some tweaks to fit your lifestyle I’d be happy to create a personalized planner page for you. The personalized planner is $10 with up to 3 adjustments to make it perfect for you. To purchase a personalized planner contact me through email at cheri.dietzman@gmail.com