Skip to main content

How to Organize your Monthly Planner


If anyone is like me, you can't live without a planner. I swear I look at mine about 10 times a day. I keep everything in this baby. From work, to bills, to blog post, to birthdays. Nothing is going to slide past me! The specific planner I have isn't my favorite, but my organization has really seemed to work great for me the last few years, so is love to share some tips with you. 



Here is a view of March. It's slap dab full. 


Here is April, which isn't over yet so it definitely has some room to go. 


And here is May, which you can see is pretty clean so far. 


My first recommendation, is a post it note with all of monthly bills, which hangs out in the top left corner. At the beginning of the month, I write a list of everything that is due, and as the bills come I write the amounts. There's a few which I know will be the same every month and I can go ahead and jot those down. This helps me keep a better picture of all of the finances. I write the totals on this list, and I write the bill on the due date with the total as well, as shown below. 


As these bills are paid, I will write PAID in black ink, with the date I paid it above. 

I then bring in a few of my extras. Washi tape and post it notes! 




I use washi tape to cover the important dates. 


As you can see, all of my pay days are marked with washi tape, and with a post it note beside the date. The post it notes mark all of the bills that need to be paid with that specific pay check. I again, with put the totals on this list as I receive the bills. I also have a money total on every Friday. My boyfriend and I are a doing the weekly savings, found on Pinterest and this keeps my reminder of how much is due each week. I check the amounts off as I put the money in our savings. 


I have other days marked with different tape, as you see above. My work holidays are marked with the flowers, and birthdays are marked with the leopard tape. 

One other thing that really helps me is color coding. I have a lot of meetings at work, and as you can see in March, I have those marked in pink and purple. For April I decided to write the bill due dates in different colors coordinating with the pay check they will be paid with. 

For March and April I also have any important sales marked with tab post it notes. I can't miss any Ulta or Sephora sales! 

So these were my few tips. I've learned the pretty I try to make things, the more organized I stay and I have NEVER into life paid a bill late! Do you have any tips I might be missing? Please let me in the comments below! 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blogtober Day 24! DIY Remove Black Stains from Hardwood Floors

      This blog is coming to you by accident, of course. I don't know if I've mentioned it much on this blog, but I have two pitbulls. I know, a lot to handle, and one of them is a puppy. She is horrible sometimes, but I can't help but love her. Our whole house is hardwood floors, which I love! With my two dogs, if the happen to have an accident it's really easy to clean up...or so I thought.  We have had a large living room rug down for about 6 months now. Over the weekend we decided to take it outside and air it out and do a little "Fall Cleaning". Low and behold underneath the rug were huge dark black spots on the hardwood. I immediately jumped on Pinterest to see what to do. It turns out dogs urine causes the wood to turn black (who knew?). So I found a solution that I'm really excited to share with you.  Peroxide! Awesome, I had plenty on hand and immediately started to try it out. At first I used a paint brush to apply it to the specific areas.  Almo

Personal Planner Setup

I have been using a planner for as long as I can remember. My little OCD self needs something to keep me grounded and on track. About 3 years ago I discovered Erin Condren as well as the planner community on social media (if you are a planner person check them out, it is such a positive and supportive group of people). If you're not familiar, the Erin Condren Life Planner is an A5 size planner (7" by 9") and is a thick planner. For me, this type of planner is not convenient for every day use so this planner stays at home on my desk and is used mostly for my creative side, not functionality. This brings me to my personal size planner, I use a Kate Spade Wellesley planner which can be bought at the Kate Spade Outlet stores (these outlets will ship to you so call around if you don't live close to one and are interested). Currently as pictured above I am using the red version which was re-released this Summer, and I also have a black version which is always in stock.

DIY IKEA Kitchen Shelf

  It is finally complete! I have been working on decorating this bad boy for a few weeks now and I'm in love! Thanks to my dear husband we were able to turn this cheap IKEA shelving unit into an adorable farmhouse style kitchen shelf pretty easily. See below for our step by step!    This is the IKEA Mulig Shelving Unit which is $59.99 for the largest size. This measures 47 1/4x13 3/8x63 3/4 "    We purchased a 3/4" piece of plywood at Home Depot in which we got cut in store for each shelf. These measure 46 1/2" by 13"    Also at a Home Depot we purchased a tube of Loctite Power Grip and a small can of Golden Pecan stain . This stain matches a few other items in our house so they would all look cohesive.    Once home, let the staining begin.      After one coat of stain was dry we used the Loctite to place the plywood on the shelves. We used sand bags to weigh down e