Blessed With Interruptions: My own planner

Over the years I have tried all kinds of planners. I have had week-to-an-opening, day-to-a-page, a gorgeous leather filofax style planner, a monthly planner and many variations on the above mentioned diaries. But since my move from career woman to family manager, I have struggled to find something that really meets my needs. The past 2 years, I have even tried a couple of mum-style planners but they have still not been quite right for me. So born of my frustration with what was currently on offer, I decided to make my own.

The Baines Family Planner (Mark I) was just what I wanted but couldn't find. It didn't have lots of pages that weren't relevant to my family, had my preferred vertical layout for my weekly calendar pages and of course, it had my lovely family on the front. What's not to love? Well, 7 months down the track, (I began working on this last October) I am, overall, still very happy with my planner but there were a couple of changes that I thought would really make a difference and so I designed Mark II.

From the outside it looks just the same but the inside has changed a bit to make it more user friendly and to work with the way I tend to record things. The key change is that I scrapped the week-to-view pages because while I have appointments most days, they are primarily the girls activities which I am quite familiar with and the details don't change often. And so I replaced them with a larger monthly calendar which fills 2 pages and has plenty of room for me to write my activities on.

I have also added a page for my weekly to do list. This is an idea I have been using for quite a while. My to do page has 9 boxes that fit a mini square post-it note in it. This allows me to prioritise the tasks I really need to get done in the week and then when I have completed them, I just chuck the post-it note in the bin. This keeps my to do list neat and tidy and stops it from becoming overwhelming. I use a bigger version of this to do list on my kitchen bench for tasks that need completing at some stage (but not necessarily this week). I need to see the reminders regularly as since having children, I seem to have the memory of a goldfish! (The exception to this is an uncanning recall of phone numbers and song lyrics - the former is more useful than the latter!)