Yet Another Attempt at Organizing

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to organize, sort, declutter, and create a cleaning schedule. I generally start with a new plan every January, try two or three other ways throughout the year, before finally admitting defeat around Thanksgiving and deciding to focus on just the main rooms (to make room for the Christmas tree and decorations), vowing that I'll start again the next year. This year has been no exception.

While I didn't start out the year making any "New Year's Resolutions," I did still have some goals in mind. At the top of those goals was decluttering and organizing before Janie's arrival in May. I'm a list person, and I love planners, though I'm not always good at using them. My problem with planners stems from trying to keep too many of them going at once. With my lofty ideas I always have several going at once: one for the bills, one for blogging, one for Usborne, and one with birthdays, anniversaries, playdates, and other plans. While in my mind it seemed more organized (looking to work on something specific, you only need look at that one planner) it ultimately meant that I was using none of them because I forgot to look at them to see what was actually happening.

In the end of November, when the planners and calendars first started appearing in stores, I decided I needed to buy one. Normally I wait until closer to January, but since we had prenatal appointments and other appointments to add to our 2017 calendar already I wanted to get started. I absolutely love the looks of the personalized planners you can buy online, but with my track record of pushing them aside by about April I decided to go cheap but effective. I bought two planners. The first was a bill calendar. While I want things to be condensed, this one makes more sense to have separate because I sit down to pay bills every payday and don't otherwise need to have that info out. Not only that, but having a separate bill planner allows me to leave it with the bill book and lets Hubby know where to find it as well (without having to sift through everything else in my other planner) if he needs to know when something is due or how much it is. I don't need much room in this calendar, so I bought a $1 planner that just has monthly spreads with a little room on the sides for extra notes. Super easy. (I also add birthdays to this planner so that as I'm figuring out bills & budgeting money I can plan for any birthday gifts or other expenses.)

 The second planner I bought was a daily planner, which includes a monthly spread as well as weekly spreads with more space. The monthly spread includes brief notes about events (names for birthdays and anniversaries, or one word notes to say "doctor", "playdate", etc.). This allows me a quick overview if I'm trying to plan an appointment. If something is listed on that day then the details are listed in the weekly spread that tell place, time, etc. I wanted to give my planner a fun look and help separate events happening on the same day, so I used stencils to help keep notes and ideas contained. Other things noted on the weekly spread include blog topics and weekly business goals for my Usborne business.

Once I had some organization to my planning, I wanted to figure out how cleaning and organizing was going to fit into these first few months of the year before Janie's arrival. I love the extra spaces this particular planner (which I found at Dollar General for $3) provides for different things. I used the notes section on the monthly spread to write down monthly cleaning and organization goals as well as a to-do list for the month that wasn't necessarily specific to a particular day or week. I think took those monthly goals and broke them down into something a little more manageable for a week and wrote those into the space at the top of each weekly spread. Other fun features include a notes section at the back of each month which I'm using to keep track of the books I've read that month; a large notes section at the end which I'm using for lists (though so far the only list is "When did I last..." to help me keep track of things like washing betting, changing toothbrushes, and cleaning out the fridge); and a two-page spread of the entire year of 2017 which I'm using to keep track of our toy and book rotation.

Some of the organization things (like the weekly breakdown of the monthly goals and "When did I last..." list are things that I've added within the last week after looking back at January and realizing that I didn't get such a great start to my goals last month. Hopefully as the year progresses having one combined planner and a particular way of keeping track of these goals will help me to better accomplish them.

I'd love to hear about your planner organization or even your general cleaning and organization strategies. There's always room for improvement and new ideas, and I'm far from having it all figured out. I can't wait to see what you've got!