Sunday, March 8, 2015

Back with a review

Hey guys!


 It’s been a very long time since I last posted but now I’m back and I will be trying my hardest to post more often and an update. Last time I posted I was using the Erin Condren life planner so I thought I’d come back with a review.  The Erin Condren life planner is very well constructed and sturdy. The binding is strong and hard to bend which made it less likely to get bent out of shape in my purse. The pages are thick enough so that most pens won’t bleed through but I’m sure a sharpie would probably show through the page though.  For reference I use: le pens, sharpie pens, and staedtler pens without any bleed through. This planner is beautiful to look at with all the bright colors and the quotes.


 I have always preferred using spiral bound planners because I felt that binder planners were too stiff and it bothered me that they didn’t lie flat. I have been using planners ever since middle school when we would get a new one at the beginning of each school year. Even then I was obsessed with planners because getting a new planner was my favorite part of starting a new year. The school would always give us spiral bound planners with stickers in the back to mark things off and I am pretty sure this is when my love for planners began. What caught my attention about the Erin Condren life planner was that it reminded of those planners except 100x better. My favorite section in the life planner was the monthly section because the boxes  are so big that I could write as much as I wanted.  I found that useful to track various long term goals or tasks from month to month. The weekly layout however, did not work out for me because the days have little space for my planning needs right now. I liked this planner so much that I tried to make it work for me so I decided to taking it out of the spiral and putting it into a  binder style planner. I used it this way  for awhile but it still didn’t work for me as well as I wanted it to but I didn’t want it to go to waste since its dated and I wouldn’t be able to go back and use it later.


  Around that time my mom started talking about how she needed a planner. I asked her if she wanted to try using  the Erin Condren  and she said sure so I decided to set it up for her in a mini binder. I punched holes in all the pages and bought her one of those mini “better binders” from staples.  It’s amazing how much better the life planner works for my mom because she gets so much use out of it. She tracks her bills on the monthly pages, tasks during the weekly spread, and she uses the pages in the back for journaling.  She absolutely loves it and I am glad she does because this planner is too beautiful  to leave unused on the shelf collecting dust. I have come to find that not all planner setups work for everyone but there is definitely a planner for everybody. It’s just a process you have to go through to find the style that works for you. It took me some time to figure out what worked for me but now I think I finally found a system that’s very functional for me.
                                                    My mom loves angels so she put  some angel stickers on her cover.

                    I added this pocket to her planner and she uses it for her coupons.
     I closed the bottom of the folder with tape so that she can stick things in the          middle of it also.
      She adds mini binder paper in the back for her notes and journal writing.
             The Erin Condren life planner fits perfectly into this mini binder.



Thanks so much for reading!
                        -Linda

P.S. I will be posting about my new planning system soon.