Let's Be Real (New Blog Series)

*I normally (rarely) blog only about planners but I want to share a new series about my challenges with decluttering our home. These posts will be mixed in with the planning posts shortly to resume.

Let's be real.

I don't know if this happens to anyone else but I have this self-sabotaging habit of starting projects, getting super frustrated halfway through and walking away, leaving a bigger mess than before.

My kitchen cabinets are a perfect example of this.  Four, yes four, weeks ago, I decided I wanted to clean out my kitchen cabinets. So on a Saturday, I got to work.  I started in the big cabinets below and was able to rearrange a couple of them and filled one box to go to Goodwill.  I should have stopped with those two.

I didn’t.

I decided to move onto the higher cabinets where our Tupperware lives. I pulled everything out of these two cabinets.

Then I got bored, distracted, saw a squirrel, something.  I left everything on the kitchen countertops. 

I mean...EVERYTHING.  ALL.  OVER.  THE.  KITCHEN.  COUNTERTOPS.

It was a mess. 

And then I proceeded to leave town for 4 days.  I bet you thought I’d get it all straightened out when I got back right? 

Nope.  Then it was the 4th of July.  (Play imaginary montage of fireworks.)

Oh so, after the 4th, right?  Yeah sure, 3 weeks after.

I made my family live around this mess I created.  We went for weeks with barely any counterspace to make meals.  We couldn’t do anything and all three of us would get so frustrated each time we walked in the kitchen.

Does that happen to you too?  You go to confront a mess only to stand there staring at it and then you just turn around and walk away.  That might just be me and my lazy self.  I dunno.

But last night, on a Monday night (gasp), we had had enough.

My 11 year old daughter really had had enough.  She’s a much better organized adult than I am.  I’ll admit it.  She wanted to make cookies but had no room so she started going through what I had pulled down and cluttered all over. 

And of course, I didn’t think she was doing it to my satisfaction so I stepped in and started doing what my grown-ass self should have done weeks ago.  Between the two of us, we rearranged and decluttered so much stuff out of these cabinets. We went from having to duck when you opened a cabinet door so things didn’t fall out and hit you to a nicely organized haven for my Tupperware and kitchen staples. 

I’m sure there is all of this reasoning behind why people do this.  I’m sure I could pay a therapist to help me with this.  Maybe I should.  But I do now 100% what works - just doing it.  Nike had it right all along in this respect.  Just do it. 

There isn’t a magic cleaning fairy that will come and wave her wand to make it all go away.  Well, maybe there IS a magic cleaning fairy for those of you that can afford it.  That is not me.

I am my own cleaning fairy.  I normally suck at the job but yesterday I had a victory.  These two cabinets were my one tiny victory in a house full of battles.

Go make your own victory today.  Just do it.

Daily Schmaily.

Part of that planner peace I spoke of recently are these daily inserts from Lights Planner Action.

While scrolling through IG - AGAIN - I stumbled across the feed of @MarySoContraryPlans.  She does absolutely beautiful daily pages and gave me inspiration to try my own.

Aren't those absolutely BEAUTIFUL?!?!

I commented on one of her pics saying she had opened my eyes to the beauty of simple grid paper.  The way she puts everything together is just stunning and you forget it's all her creativity on regular paper - no fancy inserts, no full kits.  It's really awesome to me.

The search for grid paper began immediately so I could try it myself but then the old noggin kicked in and remembered I had these cute inserts from Lights Planner Action.  Yes, fancy inserts but I bought them so I might as well use them.

Mine look nothing like MaryAnne's but I really have fun with them.  And it has actually helped me stay on track, well some days anyways.  Just focusing on the day at hand is peaceful itself.  I know what I need to do and I have, for the most part, stuck with it and not transferred tasks to another day.

I've tried it in my B6 rings and I "shopped my stash" and used an old watercolor paper pad that I cut to fit inside the B6 strings planner.  I still have my monthly and my weekly but I spend most of my time on these dailies.

As you can see, my dailies are not even close to hers as far as design and talent. But you know what? That's okay.  Everyone starts somewhere.  Begin at the beginning, right? What I do know is that this planning style is right for me right now.  It really feels like it helps keep me on track for the day and that's what planning was meant to do.

Have you tried daily planning?  How did you like it?  Stop by @MarySoContraryPlans and say hi!  She is an amazingly creative and kind planner girl!

Planner Peace. Planner Turmoil.

Planner Peace.

I keep hearing that.  Every time I hear it I have an overwhelming desire to be anything but peaceful.

I think it's a figment of the imagination.  I've never felt 100% at peace with any planner I have used.

I have come close.  Maybe 85-90%.

Such is life right now.

I am still using my Erin Condren Life Planner and I do love it. The paper is amazeballs.  Yes, it's a word.  Google it.

I wanted to have one year where I used the same planner the whole year.  All I can say is I am getting "itchy" in this planner and trying to patiently wait until July when the year is up.  It used to be my EDC ("every day carry") but the month tabs started to really get abused.

In December, I attended Winter Planner Land, a yearly planner conference held in Georgia.  One of my tablemates brought her Print Pression B6 and I instantly fell in absolute love. I coveted it.  Once home again, I started stalking the website to try and score one for my Christmas present.

I present Kate Middleton in lavender.

This is a Print Pressions B6 rings and it is probably the absolute closest I have come to that fabled planner peace.  I have an uncoiled B6 Limelife Planner, also picked up at WPL, inside that I use for my monthly and weekly views.  There are also sections to track of Girl Scout cookie sales, books I'm reading, scripture writing, meal planning and other projects.

Once this planner was all set up, I started telling people I had found it - yep, planner peace.

Pump the brakes!  In walks this beauty...

Kate Middleton in oil tanned leather.  Isn't she lovely?

I stumbled upon this drop dead beautiful planner by accident. Scrolling Instagram one night at about 2 am, minding my own business, when in my feed should appear a post from the former Pocket Lily Designs saying she's going out of business and every TN would be 50% off.  I immediately knew I should contact this girl and see if I could help her out 'cause I'm nice like that.

The funny thing though about scrolling IG when you can't sleep and trying to make shopping decisions is you quickly forget the planner peace you already seem to have and you also forget all you have learned about fitting rings into strings and what sizes work with what.  So I ordered the wrong size to work with the planner peace set up I had just found.

Note to planners unfamiliar with putting a set of rings into a string planner - a B6 isn't a B6 any more with rings added.  It makes the paper too long for the notebook once it's closed and everything hangs out the side.  If I had been awake and thinking properly or even  just a responsible planner girl and not a cheap and easy planner girl, I would have not been cheating on my current planner.

I added in a set of personal rings to see how I liked it.  With this setup, I can either use the strings to hold B6 inserts, or the rings to hold personal size inserts.

Alas, I'm a planner ho and I ordered the wrong thing.

But now that I have her, I absolutely love her.  Well, I love petting her, smelling her, and the look of her.  (Any romance writers that might be reading this post can steal that line if you'd like!)

So now if I want to use this Pocket Lily planner, I have to change my setup completely.  No more Limelife, no more Lauren Phelps kits.  Begin again.

So that is today's conundrum.  I know I could use this new planner as something else but I really don't want to.  It want it to be MY PLANNER PEACE.  So concessions will have to be made.  I just have to figure out what those will be.

Phooey on planner peace.

I'm sadly not Elle Woods.

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!

Being creative when you feel like a sloth.

In the past, I've gone through periods where I just could not focus on any project.  I am pretty good at buying the things to do "the thing" but my follow through is total carp.

[Yes, I know the correct word is "crap" but this is an inside joke with a group of the most amazing women I have ever met so "carp" it is!] 

I wanted 2018 to be a fresh start in my blogging experience. 

Here it is June and I've written a sum total of 3 posts.  Total fail.

Since I started this version of my blog, I've done a lot of things I could write about.  I flew for the first time since before 9/11.  I visited Texas which most Texans will tell you that's all you ever need to do to make your life complete.  I attended a super empowering planner conference.  My child has finished another year in school.  I've celebrated a birthday, wedding and work anniversaries.

There have been things - events.  I haven't felt compelled to blog about a single one.

Usually my reasons are: I don't have enough time, I don't take good enough pictures, my spreads aren't good enough. 

I realized that the one constant in all of this is one word - enough.

I haven't believed I am ENOUGH to share or celebrate anything. 

I am just now realizing that that statement is TOTAL CARP.

I can feel the creativity inside of me is starting to tickle my insides.  That sounds way creepier than I mean it to. I just mean that I'm starting to want to spend time sitting down and getting messy and doing the things. 

But these things have to start small or my brain will get overwhelmed and curl up on itself again.

So this weekend I vow to sit down and make something.  I don't know what or how or even how long it will take to clean up after myself.  I've been watching a lot of creative journaling videos on YouTube lately and I think I want to dust off my old journal and get back to it.

EVEN IF IT'S TOTAL CARP.

It will still be okay and I will have spent some time on my own self care.  Women tend to forget we need this, deserve this and should make time for it.  We can't take care of anyone else if we feel empty all the time.

So I am challenging anyone reading this to take some time this weekend and create something.  Journal, paint, bake, yoga (is that a verb?).  Do something for you.  Come back and share what you did. 

EVEN IF THE END RESULT IS TOTAL CARP.

Prima Traveler's Notebook

Traveler's notebooks or TNs have really taken off in the past year.  They come in many sizes and materials.  I have fabric ones called "fabric doris" and I also have some top of the line leather ones from Foxy Fix.
And I've tried several sizes like the personal, pocket, A5 and B6.

Recently, I saw a listing for this new Prima Traveler's Notebook from a shop I frequent called PlannerShoppe. 

What drew me to this TN was the zippered pocket in the back. I don't remember ever seeing that design on any other TN before. 

Prima just released these in the personal size.  It is made out of genuine leather and comes with a pen loop, four elastic bands on the inside and a zippered pocket. 

This color is so pretty and soft and the leather feels amazing.  I've dressed mine up with a weekly calendar and a few plain inserts. 

I normally carry around a large A5 ringed planner in my purse but when I saw this one with the zippered compartment I thought I would try it as an every day carry for a bit. 

Weekly Layout 02-26-18

This week I used a kit from Strawberry Lime Designs called Practically Perfect.  The colors are a nice mix of soft and vibrant working together.  This shop is based in my very favorite United Kingdom.  The shipping time from the UK to the US wasn't very long at all. 

I am using printed weekly inserts from JeePapeterieShop on Etsy.  I really like these inserts.  I usually prefer horizontal weeks but these inserts have enough space for habits, meals, shopping and the daily boxes are perfect for any kit designs for Erin Condren kits. 

Everything rests inside an A5 Foxy Fix ringed planner. 

I actually made a mistake when putting in the dates so I had to use a mix of stickers from several shops to cover up the mistakes.  I think it's barely noticeable.  

Planner Recipe:

A5 Foxy Fix in Boss Babe Moonlit

Printed A5 inserts from JeePapeterieShop

Practically Perfect kit from Strawberry Lime Designs

Additional stickers from Pumpkin Paper Co., Shine Sticker Studios, Adventures of Lucy