Hobonichi Cousin 2019 Set Up

January 1, 2019

It’s finally set up!

After procrastinating a good few weeks, in case I changed my mind about how to use it, I’ve finally got my Hobonichi set ups sorted for 2019. Today I’ll be taking you through my Cousin, the planner which lives on my desk at home.

I purchased a Spring 2018 edition of the Cousin and after starting to use it on the 1st April, I didn’t move out of it all year. That could be a record for planner use. Now, despite having three months left of that Cousin, I bought a Jan 2019 start one back in November. This is partly so I can start afresh in Jan, but also because I’ve evolved how I use the Cousin and want to change up its use slightly. In 2018 I was also using a Filofax personal for things that I now want to completely move into the Cousin.

The first thing you may have noticed is that there’s no cover on this just yet. While I had a nice black cover on the 2018, it started to look a little worn and so I’ve currently got a new one on it’s way to me.

To begin setting this up, I first added tabs to the monthly pages. Using sticky tabs on the current month became annoying in my 2018 Cousin and so this year I wanted something more permanent and smaller.

Yearly view

In 2018 I sort of haphazardly used the yearly view as an index for my daily pages. This year I’m using this for blog planning. This is something previously I was still using my Filofax for. I was using a month on two pages to both plan out and then track which posts had gone live. While it worked okay, I didn’t like only being able to see one month at a time. I’m hoping that being able to see several months together will help me plan out when I post better.

I dug out my trusty label maker to create the title of these pages. I quite like how it turned out. At the top of each month there’s space to write six things. I intend on using this space to write the blog posts I intend on publishing that month. Then, when they’re written and scheduled I’ll write them next to the corresponding date. I’ll be using a colour coding system to easily identify what kind of post it is (productivity, beauty or craft) to ensure I get an even spread of posts. Finally, I added a Coco Fusen sticky tab to the page, to quickly locate it. I decided not to apply permanent tabs to anything in my Cousin other than the monthly pages, just in case I changed up how I used it throughout the year.

Monthly view

My monthly layouts are pretty standard. I use it to plan out my month. In 2018 I also used these pages for financial planning, but in 2019 it’s moved into my everyday carry. In 2019 instead I’ll also be using my monthly pages to record my skincare routine.

On the left hand side I’ll be recording my planned AM and PM routines. Underneath that is where I’ll be putting my to do’s for the month. These are all shop and blog related tasks for the month.

In terms of monthly decoration, instead of using a kit I dug out a calendar cover up sheet from the shop. They were a little too big and so I’ve made some smaller ones for future months.

Weekly planning

Not much has changed with my weekly planning and if you follow me on IG it’ll look familiar. The only addition here has been a new daily habit tracker sticker. There are still random habits that I’ll track for a week or so at a time, but there’s a few things I need/want to consistently do each day.

If you’d like your own custom trackers, I’ve got them listed here.

Daily pages

I generally used my daily pages for anything other than planning in 2018. But with little organisation and even when I used the index, I just found I lost pages. I also got irritated by the checklists and time strip on the daily pages as I wasn’t using them. To fix that, I made some daily page cover ups to hide those things and make the pages look like notes pages. I’ve kept the dates visible in case I want to use them for indexing purposes later.

If you’d like to do the same, sheets of these cover ups are available here.

How I’ve set up these pages so far is for blog and shop planning. Jan 1st has all my blog post ideas, split into the three categories. Jan 2nd and 3rd are filled with picture ideas for either social media or the blog, with areas to track when they have been taken, planned and then posted. These pages have sticky tabs so I can quickly find them.

Jan 4th is used to track my shop, blog and social media stats across the year.

For each thing I want to track there are three lines. The top line is for the actual number. The second and third lines are for colouring red or green according to performance vs previous month and year. I miscounted and the last thing only has two lines. I’ll therefore be using the two lines for an overall review of the month. Red or green according to the month on month and year on year progress.

I’m intending on only using the first few pages of each month for any collections such as the above. I’ll be adding new ones such as sticker ideas in the coming weeks. I’m going to put them at the start of the month so they’re easier to find. I’ll also avoid using weekend pages as those are the days I’m most likely to do daily planning on.

Planner 1 (of 4) set up for 2019!

That’s right, I have four planners for 2019! If you want an overview of them all, I go through them here. I’ll be spending January writing set up posts for each of them, if you’re keen to see the detail on the other planners.

I’m really excited to start using this new set up. I’ve done some goal planning for 2019 in the ‘turning the pages to a new year’ double page spread in the Cousin so now I’m super focused on next year and what I want to achieve.

What planner(s) are you using for 2019? I’d love to know in the comments below! If you’re still deciding, you can check out my planner comparison post here.