Plan With Me August: Day 1 How I choose my planner

Some of the parts of me are tightly connected other parts are more lose and free flowing. I am an English teacher who likes to read. I am sure you are all shocked. In the four years I have been a teacher I have discovered that one thing teachers like is stationary. Let a bunch of teachers lose in a stationary store and it will be expensive. An extension of this is a love of organization. Now not all teachers will be organized (I will have nightmares about my friend C's desk for years to come, but that's okay my desk gives her nightmares). One of the ways in which my love for organizing comes out is thru my love for planners. I recently saw a planner challenge over on Pintrest (the actual challenge is on Instagram) and I thought I would take part. I'll be posting pictures over there every day but I will write some longer posts here on some of the days.

So today is all about how you choose your planner. Now I've tried many different ways over the years from simple pocket calendars to bullet journals to the big Kikki-K planner I have now. I've done paper planners and electronic planners. Finding the right planner is HARD. And, add to that your planner needs change. That small pocket planner with squirrels I had in 8th grade isn't going to cut it for the slightly scattered teacher, so you have to re-evaluate. 

One thing that has been consistent for me (and a big reason why I abandoned the bullet journal) is a need to see a week at a time. Less or more leaves me feeling stressed. A week is Goldilocks perfect for me. 

My first few years as a teacher I got A5 calendars for teachers that we bought through work and these worked okay for keeping track of what was happening. The had a week per spread. And usually some good information. But something was missing. I realized I wanted to add in pages. I wanted to be able to keep my notes from meetings and my absence sheets with me (I'll talk more about my teacher planner in a later post). I was also tired of carting around all these extra pages that I never use. Enter a Filofax. I had a personal size one in high school and liked it but wanted something bigger. I ended up going for the Filofax Metropol Organiser in red. I thought I wanted the notepad at the back and the business card holders. I wasn't super happy with the colour but a girl can't have everything. The A5 had a horizontal calendar that suited me as it gave me more space to write on each day than my previous vertical calendars had. I kept a short note of what I was planning on teaching for each class, using different colours for each class. I ended up not using the note pad since the top page curled but despite that we were moving along nicely.

Mint

Dark Cherry

Then a friend of mine pictured her Kikki-K calendar on Instagram. I had such organizer envy. And it only grew when I checked out the web page. I was in Organization heaven. I swear I had palpitations. I wanted the Large Planner in Mint. But it was sold out so I ended up getting the Black Cherry one instead. And boy am I glad. The colour suits my beloved Kate Spade handbag perfectly and it just suits me. At first I kept my Filofax pages but I didn't like how they stuck out over the tabs so in the end I ended up getting the Kikki-K pages. And I love them. Right now I am happy with the planner. I can add the pages I need, especially since the planner comes with stickers that you can replace the already printed labels. It is a good size for my handbag and my life. Right now it is perfect for me.

Copyright ©2015 Zee from A Tea Stained Page. This post was originally posted by Zee from A Tea Stained Page. It should not be reproduced without express written permission