I'm sadly not Elle Woods.

Thursday, July 12, 2018

I am not a Type A personality but I covet that life.  I want to be the girl that has everything in order.  I want to be Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, but I’m not.  On soooo many levels, I’m not.

I want to be the girl that has her shit together - the house, the car, the kid, the bills, the life.  Everything together and running smoothly, or as smoothly as life can run day in and day out.  But I’m the girl that is always late, always forgetting something, always a day behind.  I think that’s why planners speak to me so much.  I love the idea of an actual plan written out and followed.  But even planning doesn’t run smoothly for me.

I think being what I affectionately refer to myself as - a “planner whore” - is total evidence of that.  I have tried so many planners and am still struggling with “planner peace”.

Happy Planner - tried it.
Erin Condren - tried it.
Plum Paper - check.
Day Designer - mmmhmm.
Paper Source - yep.
A5 rings - yes, and personal size too.
Traveler’s notebook - which size?  Tried them all.
Bullet journal - again, yes.

You name it, I’ve probably tried it. I love different things about each size/version/brand.

Some are too big, some are too heavy, some are hard to add in pages.  With every version, there was always something I loved and something I hated.

The Happy Planner is super cute but it’s big and I am not always a fan of the disks even though it does make customizing and adding in sections very easy.

I hated the coil and the vertical layout of the Erin Condren when I’ve tried it in the past.

Plum Paper Planner is very nice. The paper is wonderful and I loved the horizontal layout.  But there isn’t a huge base of people using these and I felt uninspired in it.  Same with the Paper Source and Day Designer.  That Day Designer is a daily planner so that makes it super huge too.  It is not likely to be an “every day carry”.

I went from uninspired to overstimulated with a bullet journal.  There are so many talented and creative people out there rocking bullet journals that I felt I could never do it justice.

The A5 rings and the B6 traveler’s notebooks were the closest I ever came to feeling at home in a planner.  I loved the beautiful covers and could really personalize the sections to my needs.  Decorating both always made me feel very creative and I loved that.  But...the size of the A5 makes it hard to carry it with me every day.  Cue the B6 TN and I thought I had found THE ONE.  Sadly, we broke up a few months later.  At first, I realized my B6 was too fat.  Isn’t that a horrible reason to break up with someone?  Yes, I’m shallow evidently.  I tried paring it down some to become more manageable,  but still I realized I wanted to add in pages here and there but that requires adding in another insert.  All the flipping back and forth between inserts just got to me.

Once again, I found my eye wandering to what else was out there.  Instagram is the worst possible source to have at your fingertips when you are trying to stay in a committed planner relationship.  All the eye candy right there ready to make even the most loyal planner girl do a double take and think “I wonder what that would be like...”.  IG is the “debil”!

I have a few friends that are, unlike me, faithful planner girls.  They are 100% faithful to Erin Condren planners.  After seeing Erin Condren herself at Go Wild in Nashville last year, I slowly became a fan.  I love, love, love how warm and personable she is.  I love her fashion sense.  (Girl wore a pair of pants in Nashville that I couldn’t stop thinking about.)  She is so supportive of planners and the entire planner community.  She is always such a huge sponsor of Go Wild and other planner events.  All of that made me want to support her right back.

One thing I did always envy my friends with their EC planners was when the planner was finished, they had an entire year of their lives at their fingertips.  They could flip through and all the memories were right there.  With my history of planner jumping, I did not have that at all.  I have a few months here, a few there. 

Here I am a planner and I don’t even have my planner life in a sensible order.  The whole reason for planning that one central life map to keep everything on track is scattered all over the place.

No wonder I’m not Elle.  No wonder I can’t get my life in order.

So this year, I have decided to challenge myself.  One planner.

One planner to rule them all!  Just one.  Come next July, I want to have an entire year of my life right there, altogether, in my hands.

Introducing the newest version of Kate Middleton, my planner.

This is an Erin Condren vertical neutral 12 month planner with a July start. Can I tell you all that I got this planner in the mail a good month and a half before it started and just about every day, I walked by it and petted it!  I was so excited to get started on my challenge.

I am now three weeks into using this planner and I am still excited about planning again.  I love to pull this book out and look at it, even during the days when I have no plans at all.  I am learning how to decorate it, what stickers I actually use and which ones don’t work for my life.  It’s brought a renewed interest in planning back for me and that makes me so happy.

So on with life, on with planning.  One planner.  One focus.  Wish me luck!


DESIGNED BY ECLAIR DESIGNS