HOW I ORGANIZE MY SIMPLIFIED PLANNER + MY REVIEW

You know when you're anticipating something for a really long time, and then it finally comes together and you just can't wait to tell everyone about it?! That's how I feel about today's post & sharing my Simplified Planner with y'all!

I take my planners very seriously, so when I went on the search for a new one I reviewed a LOT of options! I even reached out to y'all on Instagram and got about 100 suggestions- y'all are the best! I looked at each and everyone thoroughly, but ended up connecting with the Simplified Planner team at Emily Ley and moving forward with the Simplified Planner Daily Edition (in "Happy Stripe" of course!) Before I shared it with y'all though I wanted to take several weeks to use it so I could make an honest recommendation. So today's post has been awhile in the making- now let's get to it! :)

First, let's talk about the basics. The daily edition of the planner comes in 4 different color options- I have "Happy Stripe." The spiral binding is super durable (you know some bend so easily) and I love that the covers are reinforced so that if you do travel with it it's got extra protection. The paper inside the planner is also very high quality! I tried out a few different pens and nothing bled through (not even my saturated highlighters). Love that!

Each month starts out with a 2-page monthly overview and there is tons of room to write! As you can see, my Thursday's are usually packed and I can fit 2-3 activities inside the box with no problem.

Just an FYI- I went back and forth on whether I wanted to use colored pens or do all black pen and highlight, but I ultimately decided that it would be much less stressful on myself to do black pen and highlight my different categories by color. My color-coding system is:

Pink- Personal

Green- Chelsea Gunn Designs (more on that soon!)

Blue- Work

Purple- Faith/Church

Orange- Blog

Yellow- Birthdays

Love that Emily includes fun stickers to make your planning more festive! (See the cute "Celebrate" above?)

Now, let's chat about the daily plans! I was so worried that I wasn't going to like planning day-by-day, but it turns out that I kind of love it! Here's why: say in a normal week I have 15-20 items on my "to-do" list- that can be overwhelming! But now I can take that same list and break it up in to 3-5 manageable tasks to tackle each day. So I'm still getting everything done in my week, but I'm not overwhelmed looking at a massive to-do list! Instead, I feel a sense of accomplishment at what I am getting done each day.

Even though I use a work calendar from 9-5 on my Outlook, I do love putting in my hourly activities for my "off time" because it also helps me to figure out the kind of time I have to accomplish the tasks and to-do's explained above.