2018 Planner Set Up

January 9, 2018

It’s time for one of my favourite posts of the year!

I love planner set up posts and they’re my favourite to read on other blogs. It’s almost worth setting up a new planner just so I can write a set up post.

After spending my Christmas break putting everything together, I think I’m finally ready to share the planners I’m using this year and how.

If you saw my 2017 in planners post from last week, you’ll see some familiar faces here.

From top to bottom, this year’s planners are:
Pocket Yellow Finsbury
Patent Fuchsia Filofax Original Personal
Burnt Orange Filofax Original Personal
Leuchtturm Official Bullet Journal in a Lyra & Co cover
Classic Happy Planner

While it may seem like a lot they are used for very separate things, and won’t be referred to every day.

Pocket Yellow Finsbury

This sadly discountinued but beautiful Finsbury (the colour, not the style) is my every day carry for this year. I used this last year but only really as an extension of my purse. I realised what was missing in my planner set up last year though, was a on the go schedule. This year I’ve tried to fix this by getting some lovely new weekly planning inserts from Ultimate Success Planner.This is my first time using these inserts and they’re lovely. Such a high GSM and soft to the touch. The design is simple and pretty and looks lovely in my Finsbury.

I’ve played with using stickers in this to try out new kits. Not sure how long that will continue, but if it’s pretty I might be inspired to use it more regularly. Not much else has changed with this planner since my original set up last year. There’s just three sections:
1) Shopping lists
2) Weekly planning
3) Notes

The only thing this is probably missing is some monthly planning pages. If I quickly need to see if I have plans on a certain day, a month on two pages will be far easier than weekly sheets.

Filofax Patent Fuschia Personal Original

This was my first ever Original and I love it. Sadly, it’s showing some poor signs of wear and this may be the last year I use it. Unfortunately the patent on it has started to crack down the side. This has put me off buying any other patent Filofaxes sadly. This set up also hasn’t changed drastically since last year. This is my shop and blog planner and while daily to dos and tasks don’t go in here, all my other related planning does.

This planner has five sections:
1) Goals – where I hold my goal planning for the year (there’s a blog post coming about this when I finish it!)
2) Etsy – anything shop related such as sticker ideas, promotional plans etc.
3) Blog – this has all my post planning and scheduling.
4) Community – everything social media related is in here.
5) Projects – this basically houses lots of dot and graph paper that I can use to maybe design, or jot down other ideas.

The biggest change to my planner this year has been one of my favourite stationery purchases of 2017 – Avery tabs.These little tabs are perfect and what I’ve been searching for for ages. All the other tabs I’d found were either massive, or silly neon colours. These come in four pastel shades – blue, green, pink and purple. The tab itself is sturdy but has a paper feel to it, meaning you can use any pen to write on it. These allow me to mark off my most used areas without giving it it’s own divider. In this planner, I’ve got sticker ideas, social media, stats and picture ideas marked off.

Filofax Burnt Orange Personal Original

This beautiful planner got overtaken by the Happy Planner as my every day planner this year. Instead, this now houses everything else ‘personal’.

This got a little bit of a makeover this year, with some new dividers.

I used a Project Life paper pad that I found ages ago in Hobbycraft that I can’t seem to find online anymore. For labeling the dividers, I used some Tim Holtz Alpha Stickers and I like how they turned out.

There’s six sections in this planner

Year – this just has an undated month on pages that I use as a perpetual calendar. It has birthdays and anniversaries in.
Goals – I’m still working on this section and how it works with the goals section in my business planner. I may just use one rather than both if there’s a risk of repetition.
Health – I needed something this year as I am determined to do something different when it comes to eating and exercise.

This is a simple tracker I made for gym visits. I’ve started Couch to 5K and have a simple workout plan I picked up online. I simply enter in the date of the visit, what day number of C25K I did and which workout (they’re lettered A, B or C). I’ve popped in an other column in case of bike rides or other activities.

These are more inserts from Ultimate Success Planner. I’m hoping these will help me to see the results of looking after myself. I love how simple these inserts are and will make it easy to see at a glance how I’m progressing. I’m not sure I’ll have 8 fitness goals each month, but I may use that area for general health goals too.

The only other thing in this section is my cleaning tracker, because I couldn’t really think of anywhere else to pop it in the planner.

4. Money – this has everything around my budget planning and savings goals in. I’m also tinkering around with this so will do a full post on this and budget planning in general soon.
5. Me – this is basically my address book.
6. Notes – like in my business planner, this just houses spare paper and the odd random list.

Like with my Fuchsia, I’m using Avery tabs to highlight my most used pages. At the back I just have a pocket for anything loose, spare tabs and a quote book I use for jotting down funny things. It’s handy to have around when scrapbooking.

Leuchtturm 1917 and Lyra & Co Cover

I still need to do a full post on this planner cover.

It’s my first fabric dori and it just adds a bit of something to my bullet journal. The main reason I bought it was so I’d have somewhere to hold a second notebook. I don’t use my Leuchtturm for any daily or weekly planning but instead this houses lots of random collections. Sometimes these collections stay here, or get transferred into a relevant planner. To give an example of some of the things in here:

Skincare log – so I can track what I’m using and how my skin reacts.
Book list – what I want to read and have read.
Coffee tracking – sounds strange, but this is where I track the different coffees I’ve tried and how much I liked them.

If you want to take a look more at what I use this for I have a couple of posts here and here.

The second notebook (this one is from Not Only Polka Dots). This is just used as general scribble/scratch pad. I like having a notebook to hand that I don’t have to worry too much about messing up.

Classic Happy Planner

I was not expecting to move my weekly planning into a Happy Planner. After trying the Erin Condren in the past and not enjoying that planning style I expected the same to happen here. However, I am really enjoying planning in this each week. I think the biggest reason I’m enjoying planning in this is the fact you can remove the pages.

It makes it so much easier to plan when you can pull the pages out. No nasty discs getting in the way of writing hand!

This planner is going to house all of my weekly and monthly planning. It’s just going to live on my desk and hopefully keep me on track each week. With so much more space than my personal, there should be no reason not to fit everything in the pages.

2018’s planners

1200 words later, that’s my set up for the year! There’s a couple of bits I’m still working on – goal planning and budget planning but the main structure is complete. While I’d like to say this won’t change throughout the year I know it will, but that’s fine! Part of the fun of planners is changing everything up now and again to get the best out of your system.

Please drop your planner set up posts in the comments below, I love to read them!