Diary Love

Anyone who knows me knows that I love diaries, and stationery in general. I love writing lists, and had a try a while ago at Bullet Journalling, but also loves diaries, and writing things in on a daily basis.

For many years I used a filofax, but now that I work from home, it is far too bulky to carry around in the nappy bag, so I decided to buy a week to view diary this year.

I hated it, I couldn’t work with it, and I ended up using numerous notebooks with lists of things that I wanted to do and actually was probably the most unorganised I have ever been. So I knew it was time for a change.

I had a long think about it and decided that actually it would probably be good to get an academic diary for a change, in January Boo will be going to preschool, and Baba will be in year 2 this year, so there will be two children’s schools to manage along with Beavers, and golf and whatever else they start doing. It seemed the natural progression to go back to this format of a diary.

Once I decided to go back to an academic diary, I needed to decide what format I wanted the diary inside. This was harder, as I kept looking and actually couldn’t find any that I liked. I wanted a diary that was big enough to have to do lists inside, almost a space for some bullet journalling, but also had space to write down the days outings, school information and all business, blogging related stuff in it. I loved Bullet Journalling when I tried it, but again the book was just too big to carry around.

Nothing seemed perfect, so in the end I brought a day to view diary and decided to adapt it to how I wanted it.

Once that was decided it was time to find a funky lovely diary, which actually didn’t take that long.

I wanted a diary that would suit all year, and would last me until this time next year, and this one page per view diary fitted the bill perfectly.

The next job was to find more stationery to adapt the diary to what I need. So that was a perfect excuse to buy lots of washi tape, post it notes and pens!

I wanted different post it notes for different things, and loved this amazing selection all from The Works and not too expensive either.

I put a lot of thought into how I wanted each page to look and school time, holidays and weekends all need to be a little different.

I wanted a section every day for my to do lists, and I also wanted a section every day for visits, as I am a nightmare at remembering where I am supposed to be and when. However for school days I wanted another section, a place to write all the information about school in, events, stuff we need to take etc.

So I divided up each page accordingly.

Following on from when I did Bullet Journalling, I added a weekly to do list on each Sunday and at the beginning of the month I had added a post it note for the monthly to do’s that I know I have to complete, like tax credits etc! When these are done I can then cross them off the weekly list, and the monthly list.

One thing that really annoys me about diaries is never having a space for a pen, unlike in a filofax, so I added a pocket to the front page of the diary, for said pens, and also a space to add letters etc to the diary.

When I did this diary I only set it up for July, to see if I actually liked the set up, and to be honest I love it. I find it really easy to store all my information in. I can write my to do lists, move them to the next day and can stick post it notes and add little notes with washi tape if I need to. Meaning that I can keep on top of being mum, wife, housewife, blogger and business owner all in one place. Which is what I have always wanted really.

So now I am setting up August and September, and just because I don’t want to get bored I am changing the washi tape borders for the holidays and term times so that I can tell the difference at a glance, which makes planning a whole lot easier.