Planner Madness: The Sequel

Wow, it's been more than a year since I posted anything here at SC-Chron. Sorry about that, folks. I've been concentrating on my book blog this year, and while I was doing that, somehow 2014 has buzzed right by, no matter how hard I tried to slow things down. And now 2015 is right around the corner. And we all know what that means, right?....

NEW PLANNERS!!!

But before talking about what I'm thinking of for next year, I thought I'd say something about my adventures in planning during the year that's about to pass on. So to start with, here's a shot of all the planners/diaries/journals/notebooks I've used in 2014 (well, most of them, anyway). I'll save most of the details for the next post, so check back in a day or two. Or three or four (things are crazy around here right now.) OK?

OK.

Click on photo to enlarge

1. Filofax A5 Finsbury in black.
2. Filofax Personal Finsbury in black.
3. Erin Condren Life Planner
4. Lett's Pocket Week-on-two-pages Diary
5. DIY Full-size Discbound Planner
6. DIY Household planner in Staples 3-ring binder
7. The Basic Scheduler from MochiThings.com
8. DIY Half-size planner in a Staples Arc Notebook
9. Paperblanks Day Planner in the Maxi size with the Grolier cover

I want to talk a little bit about each one of these -- why they did or didn't work out for me. But I'll do that in my next post -- the sequel to the sequel.

Ya'll come back now. Hear?

Planner Madness

So, autumn is here and I haven't posted anything on this blog since April!  Yikes!  Where've I been? OK, we really don't have time for all that -- it's mucho boring anyway.   So I'll just jump right in and pretend I've been here all along.

Yes, it's that time of year again, and I've been obsessing about planners, calendars, and diaries for the last month or so.  Well, maybe the last two months or so.  I'm still not exactly positive what I'm going to do in the way of planners for 2014 (DIY? Filofax? something else?), but I've got some ideas that I'll be exploring and writing about here at Supply Cabinet Chronicles in the next couple of weeks.  That's the PLAN, anyway.  With the hope that spelling it all out will help me come to some decisions.

In the meantime, here are links to a few of the most interesting posts/websites I've come across in my search around the internet.

• 10 Ways to Keep Track of Daily Routines in your Planner (10/09/2013: Patty @ Homemakers Daily)   This website has tons of good ideas and tips on planners and organization.  And you don't need to be a homemaker to benefit!
• 2014 Plannerisms Going Places Planners ready to ship (9/23/2013: Laurie @ Plannerisms).  I've admired these since they were introduced last year, and they still look interesting.  The one thing that always stops me from ordering one is that I just don't do very well with a bound planner.  I know from past experience that I'm really only comfortable with spiral or loose-leaf bindings.  So if these ever become available in a different format, I just might try one.
• 2014 Printable Planner - and a whole lot more (10/12/2013: Kayla Domeyer @ Say Not Sweet Anne).  There are dozens of cute and useful printable planners out there (just do a little searching on Etsy), but this is one of my favorites.  Love the colors and patterns -- and the "modular" design allowing you to use just the sections you need.  Also, it's not tarted up with a lot of "inspirational" quotes or cutesy illustrations.  (Not that there's anything wrong with any of that.)
• My 2014 Planner: The Inspiration (9/25/2013: Shelby Leigh @ Something Southern).  I'm having the same sort of experience, thinking about a DIY planner for next year -- lots of design ideas floating around in my head, but haven't found the ideal combination yet.
• Pinterest boards by Erin Condren.  I'm addicted to Pinterest -- the website offers a gazillion good ideas for planners, both DIY and the manufactured kind.  And Erin Condren's boards are some I return to most frequently.  I've used her Life Planners, off and on, for the last couple of years, and I'm still toying with the idea of ordering one for 2014.  They aren't the perfect planner, but they're so much fun and I'm easily tempted.

OK, enough for right now, but I'll have more to say about planners in the near future.  And please note -- I don't have any official connection with any of these websites or products, and all these opinions are entirely my own, influenced only by personal taste and whim.

Enough With the Diaries Already!

Following up on my last post, about my search for diaries for next year and the last two months of this year....

(Yes, I know you've all been on the edge of your seats out there, just waiting breathlessly for the next installment. The excitement in the air is positively tangible!)

Seriously folks, I have devoted an annoyingly huge amount of my time to this problem these last few weeks.  Finally found the elusive daily diary for 2013 (see the post about it here), but that still left me with two months of 2012 to cover (my current diary only made it to the end of October).  So I was in something of a quandary.  (Which is right next to a kankedort, and a painful position in which to find oneself, believe me.)

But (drum roll, please) after much searching and comparing and hemming and hawing -- I think I've found my book. When I was surfing Amazon, I discovered ECOeverywhere, a line of journals, sketchbooks, and photo albums created by Sun Graphix.  All recycled material (which is good), and made in the USA (which is even better).  Dozens of gorgeous cover designs available, and the journals were the perfect size (about 7.5 by 8.5 inches).  And they were really inexpensive, too!  Couldn't resist that, so I ordered a few just to test.

That one on top is adorable, isn't it?  Haven't decided on a use for it yet.  And the one pictured below, I bought just because I collect Alice in Wonderland books and ephemera, so I had to have this one:

And here's the one I'll be using as my diary for November and December (called "Autumn Leaves"):

The back cover is just as cute as the front (the back says 2011, Helen Dardik, so I'm assuming that's the designer's name):

They have a Smyth sewn binding so they lay pretty flat for writing, and the spine is a nice coordinating color:

Here's a shot of the inside pages:

Each page has the little green leaf graphic down in the corner at the bottom -- cute, but I think I'd rather have that space for writing.  Also, the paper seems OK -- not quite as smooth as I'd like, but the Quo Vadis diary I've been using has probably made me over-finicky about paper quality.  This should be fine.  The specs on Amazon say it's acid free, but I can't find anything in the actual product that makes that claim -- just that it's 100% recycled.  Each one has 80 sheets, making them 160 pages, front and back.  And the lines are made of light green dots -- not sure how I'm going to like that.  I think I'm OK with the green -- the dots...maybe not so much.

Anyway, at $4 apiece, I thought they were a great buy.  I checked Amazon just now and found that they've gone up to more than double that price, which is way more than I'd pay for one.  So I guess I just got lucky with these.  Now I just need to do something interesting enough to write about!

Dear Diary: Gotcha!

Well, I think at last I've found it.  After weeks (many, many weeks) of searching online and in the local shops, I've finally found what I believe is going to be my daily diary for 2013.  Here's a photo:

It's an "It's about time" page-per-day diary from Brownline.  Haven't used this particular product before, but when I was still working we used a lot of Brownline office supplies, and I was always pretty satisfied with their quality. It's approximately the same size as the At-a-Glance Standard Diary, which is what I figured I'd go with -- until I found the Brownline.  For some reason, I find this one a little more esthetically pleasing than the Standard Diary -- might just be that slightly Deco-looking logo on the front.

Also, the Brownline was a little less expensive (I ordered mine from Amazon), making it even more attractive!  Here's a shot comparing it to what I've been using for the last couple of years, an undated Exacompta Forum Journal in the 5"x7" size. 

I absolutely love the cover shade of the Exacompta (it's a Quo Vadis Club Cover), the size of the journal, and the paper quality (yummy!).  But I found that I was frequently using more than one page per day, so I really wanted something just a tad larger.  And, at 8-and-a-half-inches by almost 6-inches, the Brownline fills that requirement perfectly. 

It also has a lot of other features I really like.  For instance, each month's section begins with a two-page monthly calendar spread, with nice big squares (over an inch tall) to write in. 

Each two-day spread includes mini calendars (for last month, current month, and coming months).  And major holidays are printed at the top of the pages, small and out of the way.

I didn't take a photo of this, but most months have a "memorandum" page following the last day's page, for notes or to-do lists.  There's a four-page planner for 2014 at the back of the diary (again, no photo -- sorry).  And the inside back cover includes calendars for 1800 to 2050!

So, with all that going for it, I'm hoping this is going to be fun and efficient to use.  The only possibly negative feature I've found is that the paper is a little thin.  But it seems to take a variety of ink very well, without a lot of show-through.  And since I generally use gel ink or ballpoint, I don't think that's going to be a problem.  And face it, after the Exacompta, any other paper is going to feel like a falling-off.

Well, I think that's it for now.  I keep saying this (and I keep meaning it, but don't seem to be able to follow through), but I really do want to get this blog going.  Which means I really need to try to post a little more frequently than twice a year!

Oh, and before I sign off, I want to say something about my search.  As I said, it's taken me a long, long time to find the (fingers crossed) perfect diary.  I'm not sure why it should be so difficult to find a simple one-page-per-day diary in the US.  I found plenty online, for sale in Europe and the UK.  I guess Americans just don't buy diaries anymore.  And here I'm not talking about planners or organizers or agendas or appointment books or journals (although I use those, too!).  What I wanted was just a simple daily diary with one page for each day of the year. With the dates pre-printed, but without hours and minutes pre-printed (I'm not going to use it to keep track of appointments).  And at a reasonable price -- say, less than a hundred bucks.  Make that much less than a hundred bucks!

I did find tons of gorgeous journals available at our local Barnes & Noble. But none of them had the requisite 365-page format, so I would have ended up using two (or more likely, one and a half) for the year.  Not optimal.  

Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do about November and December.  The Exacompta will get me through October, but I'll need something to use for those last two months of 2012 until I can start using the new diary on January 1st.  So I guess I'm heading out on yet another search!

Dear Diary: Where Are You?

This is something I'd like to expand on later. But for now, I just have to ask: Why is it so *&^%-ing hard to find a reasonably-priced, one-page-per-day diary?

Not a planner. Not a calendar. Not an appointment book or engagement book or agenda or organizer. Just a simple journal or notebook with good paper, and at least 365 empty pages, for under a hundred bucks?

Is that really too much to wish for?