The Hobonichi Cousin is a fantastic planner.

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I’ve used this now for several years and love it. It’s definitely ‘planner peace’ for me. There’s so much to this planner though. Too much, perhaps? Inside this planner you get a yearly overview:Month on two pages:Weekly pages:And finally, daily pages:This is a whole lot of planning! If your method of planning requires using all of these all the time, then great! However, I don’t consistently use all of these sections for planning and have developed different solutions for those I don’t. If you’d like to see the alternative uses for my daily pages, you can see that post here. Today though, I’ll be taking you through alternative uses for those weekly pages, if you’re more of a daily planner.

Organised lists

Due to the vertical layout of the weekly pages, these are perfect for what I call categorised lists.

By simply covering up the days of the week with some washi* and adding in some header stickers (you find the ones used here) you’ve got a nicely organised to do list. This year, one of my goals is to improve my flat, and so I’ve been using this spread as a way to make a note of, and track everything I want to do in it. It’s split out in sections by room, with the weekend used as just general items. Everything will be captured here from new things I want to buy (see: bathmat) to things I want to clear/clean out (like my kitchen drawers which are so disorganised). The ambition is to tackle a few things off this list a week. As you can see, I’ve made some decent progress in the first weeks of the year.

I’m also using a similar format for sticker ideas lists for the shop. Using my favourite banner stickers from Sugarloop*. I covered up the days of the week and gave each column a heading. Before I just used to have a long running list of ideas. I much prefer having it set out like this so each week I can pick on a different kind of sticker to design and release. I use the blank column on the left hand side for more generic to dos related to the shop, mainly digital papers that I need to find for kits. Again, I used one of my favourite stickers from Sugarloop*.

Ideal week spread

This is something I briefly flirted with last year and decided to give it a better go for 2020. My work schedule is static, and there’s certain fitness activities I want to do on certain days. I therefore had the idea of plotting out a ‘typical’ week, starting with work and exercise as the base. This then allowed me to plot out ideal times to work on the blog/shop and my hobbies. I then plotted in Friday and Saturday nights as ‘social’ time. 

This wasn’t about me planning out a rigid weekly plan. This is more an exercise to show that I actually can do everything I want to in a week. I find it all too easy to work late one evening and let it completely throw my schedule off. With this to refer back to I can easily see where I can swap things around and still do everything I want to (i.e. exercise, as that’s the first thing to fall to the wayside when I’m busy).

I also then took it a step further and plotted out a basic meal plan for those weeks when I don’t want to think up what to have each day. If I need to do a food shop in a hurry, I can just flick to this spread and buy everything to cover these meals and be sorted. Finally, I dropped in my skincare routine by day. Things like face masks are easy to forget to do so I’ve tried to specify which day of the week I do it.

Blog planning

Another use where the columns just work perfectly.

I’m terrible at just making a note of a blog post idea and then sitting down to write it with no planning (like this one). Using the weekly pages I can make a note of key points I want to mention and anything else I want to mention in the post. It’s also perfect for creating a list of pictures I need to take for it. At the bottom I tried creating a little to do list of all the things I need to do in order to consider each post ‘complete’. I started this last year and will definitely be bringing it back for 2020.

Also, I found that the time strips from my daily page cover ups work perfectly at covering up the days of the week.

I think part of the reason I love the Cousin so much is how adaptable it is

You could very easily keep your whole life in this book. Due to the Tomoe River paper it’s not incredibly thick either, so it doesn’t take up a huge amount of space.

Do you use any parts of your Cousin for anything other than ‘traditional’ planning? Let me know in the comments below!

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