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I just got my 2020 planner, so lets talk about that.

I have to schedule everything in my daily life. Not everybody has this need, some people don’t need any planner at all, but I am not one of those people. Since I have the Anxiety expansion pack, I have to have a planner. I cannot function without one. Not everybody that has anxiety has this issue. I’ve talked to several other people who tell me that having a planner makes their anxiety worse because seeing everything that needs to be done written down in one place puts their brain into over drive and then shuts down. However for me, if I don’t have a set plan and specific path laid out for that day, the open endedness and the uncertainty give me panic attacks. So I have to make a plan.

I’ve heard from older women who’ve been through the young kid stage already to even plan events like sex. If you write that into your schedule it’s more likely to happen. Sex is important to an intimate relationship and when you’re busy, it often gets pushed to the side. But isn’t sex supposed to be spontaneous deep and intimate? Wouldn’t planning it remove the passion? Now, I know it would seem that scheduling sexy time would take the feeling out of it. But I have two counters to that, kids are unpredictable, if you’re going to get it, you need to get it when you can. You may end up with a scared kid who had a nightmare in your bed and that ends sexy time real quick. And sex is vital. It’s good for your physical and mental health and the strength of your relationship. It’s going to look different for every couple depending on you and your partner, but its important enough to make sure it happens.

You also should be scheduling a few other events. Getting regular dates with your partner and having that time together alone without the children is just as important as having that passionate sex. Make regular date plans for yourself and your partner. These don’t have to be fancy or expensive. You could go get ice cream, go for a walk, sit at home and watch Netflix. Whatever you want to do to get that quality time together. For example, we went and played putt putt on one of our dates, and went to an art museum for another. Your dates don’t have to be dinner and a movie on a Friday evening.

Side note: one of the biggest hurdles couples have is finding a babysitter and the cost of leaving their kids with someone else. Something we’ve done is we’ve made a small group of friends. People we’ve both gotten to know and spent time with. Now, we trade off babysitting with them. They keep our kids one evening for our date night and then we will keep their kids so they can have a date night. It puts me at ease knowing my children are with someone I trust and it doesn’t cost money.

I also encourage you to schedule dates with your friends. You need have time out with people that you like to be with. At least one of these dates should be without your kids. Many times, I’ll make a coffee date and we’ll grab coffee and go sit at the playground because one or both of us have our children. This is of course good for us and our kids, but we also need that quiet time away as well. Myself and a couple friends have a night about once a month where we leave our kids with our husbands and we go paint. Its only a couple hours, but it’s always a refreshing breath of fresh air. Same goes for your partner. Make sure they are getting a little time away with their friends as well. We all need that time to recharge and refresh.

I sometimes worry that my kids are getting out enough. That they aren’t getting enough exercise or fresh air or human interaction. So guess what? I schedule that in too! Dates with their friends, or days outside. That goes on my list of needed activities.

And, don’t forget we need to be scheduling those doctors, dentist, vet, etc. Appointments for ourselves and for our families. I have to write down reminders at the first of the month to myself not to forget to make those appointments.

I went ahead with the Happy Planner this year and got it from Joann’s 50% off and I had an eligible coupon. I also got some stickers to go in it and specifically some Damask Love stickers because I love Amber and I love her designs and her bright colors. Last year I had a generic brand planner I got from Walmart. It worked, but I just didn’t like it as much. I also tried a planner app on my phone to test out a virtual planner. I didn’t like how I couldn’t view things in a zoomed out manner. I understand how there are so many different apps available, but the good ones you have to pay for. Or like the one I downloaded for free, but then I’d have to make in app purchases to get better features. Its just easier for me to buy a paper planner. Its customizable, it gives me the overview and the daily details exactly how I want, and I get more creative freedom with it.

Because I need to plan every detail of the day, I need a planner that has big spaces for me to write everything down. I also need somewhere that also has an at-a-glance look so I can see what’s up this month. Since I need both day-to-day scheduling spaces and a wide view calendar I choose the Happy Planner because it provides me with these things. In addition if there were any specific thing that needed to focus on that year I can add that to my book. There are tons and tons of add ons for the Happy Planner I did not purchase. Do you need to have a section for Meal Planning? They’ve got that! Do you need a section for your health habits? They’ve got an add on for that too! Do you want thousands of glittery stickers? You can get those too!

I do have a budget app on my phone that I use so I didn’t get the Happy Planner budget section you can buy. I bought it once a couple years ago and didn’t really use it, so I knew it would just be a waste of money. The app that I’m using just adds everything up for me and I have to do no math. I think maybe that’s why I prefer the app for budget management when otherwise I prefer using tangible books.

This year, I got something that was kind of a soft color palette. I really like the rainbow ring binder that was on one of the other ones but the rest of the book didn’t quite fit my style. It was rainbow, but with stripes or circles and I like flowers and designs. If it had been rainbow flowers, I wouldn’t have thought twice, but it did not. So mine has a much softer color palette because I chose the one with the bicycle on the front with flowers and vines on the inside.

But because I do love bright colors, I did pick up some Damask Love stickers that I can add to my pages. If you are unfamiliar with Damask Love and Amber, she was a finalist on NBC’s crafting show “Making It” and is now doing the Disney+ show “Disney Family Sunday”. She does mostly paper crafting, and she is clever, brilliant and talented. Her work is always very brightly colored she does not do toned down color or blank pages. I grabbed some of her stickers so I can have a mixture of both soft color on the base and some bright popping add in stickers. I did buy a sticker packet as well that is Happy Planner brand. Productivity is the name of the sticker packet because productive is what I need to be.

At the outset of the month I will sit down and write in the general pencilings of dates. It gives me a framework for what the month will look like. Sometimes if I have things set out farther I can do rough frame for a couple of months at a time. For instance, I can have the structure made for January and loosely around February. This would be when I made any doctor appointments that needed to be scheduled and get those nailed down first. If you work a job, make sure you get that schedule written in now too. Then, I turn to my formula. I have a formula for everything. Like I’ve said, I need structure. My monthly formula includes several events that need to happen each month. Events like, a date night, a day outdoors, 24 hours with no social media, a lunch date with friends, etc. If an event requires making a plan with someone else, I can pencil it in, but I’ll have to text the person and coordinate a definitive time and date. That’s why I always use very erasable pencil for this part.

At the beginning of the week, usually on Sunday afternoon, I will sit down and make the more specifics of that week. Like everything else I do, this too has structure. Each week contains a day to Deep Clean, an Outing, an Activity, a Walk, and a Craft. Everyday I clean and tidy, but once a week I deep clean. This is when the floor gets mopped or the window tracks get cleaned. Days with outings and the activity may overlap with the months events. An outing may be a trip to the Zoo or to a Playdate. This may be the month’s day outdoors or the month’s Lunch with friends. An activity may be like a trip to the playground or something more like blowing bubbles or playing with play dough. Anything that gets us outside. Whether that outside is at the park or outside on our patio, it’s an activity and its outside. Doing a craft and taking a walk are pretty self explanatory. After each of those is placed I’ll write in the mundane tasks that have to be done. Cleaning the litter box, laundry, vacuuming, things like this.

Now for meals, I grocery shop every other week. I’ll sit down with Pinterest and my Recipe Books and list the meals I want to make for the following two weeks. Lunches and Breakfasts as well. From that I’ll write down all the ingredients and make my grocery list. I order my groceries for pickup, but my husband likes to hand pick his produce and I like to handpick my meat. So our pickup is dry goods, juice, frozen food, etc. Then we will go into the store to get fresh veggies, fruit, and meat. When I sit down on that Sunday afternoon, I’ll decide for the next two weeks when I’m going to make the meals I’ve chosen. Take this as you will adjusted to whatever you need whether that is more structure or less.

So let’s get specific. I’ll use my calendar as an example.

In the month of January, you see I’ve got my list of events to fit into the month. I really need to get that printed instead of scribbled in the margin, but it is what it is. I use pencil on the months overview so it can be erased and changed if necessary. For January you can see we are taking our day outdoors at the Playground, we had a lunch date, a Date Night on the 17th, we took two outings, one to the Butterfly Pavilion and one to the Children’s Museum. I also schedule a “pajama day” where we don’t get dressed and don’t do anything but lounge about all day and play games or watch movies. This would be an example of a monthly overview for us.

The week of, the scheduled events can be written in ink, and they are because I like the way it looks better. I’ll take whatever event or activity and write that in on the day. This would also be when I wrote in the meals for each day. And then whatever weekly activity, like my day to Deep Clean, gets assigned a day of the week. For that first full week of January you see I’ve written in the big events of the week, which were our lunch date and 24 hours of no social media. Then the daily mundane tasks like cleaning. And also the not daily but still regular tasks, such as watering the plants, baths, etc. There are other boring tasks that need to be done, but aren’t regular, such as if I need to sweep the patio or pull out and clean behind the couches. This week I deep cleaned on Monday, cleaned and organized the closets on Tuesday, we were out all of Wednesday, Thursday was our lunch date, and Friday was a pajama day.

Once all the boring words are written in, I can add some color. I use a few stickers that I think fit into the activities of the week and look cute. I get out my markers and highlight the biggest tasks that need to be done, or the most exciting. I like to add a few little doodles too. And then in the margin I list my weeks objectives. What do I most want to accomplish this week? Is it to do yoga every morning this week? Is it to write in my journal 3 evenings? Is it to get the toy box to close? For this example week, my goal was to get all the Christmas decorations put away – NO EXCUSES I wrote. I have a bad habit of writing things down, but then putting them off and drawing an arrow to the next day. I had delayed it long enough, and in fact I did delay it a few days even then.

I keep us busy. I like to always have a task ahead. Staying active keeps the kids from getting into trouble because they’re bored. It keeps all of us from getting too much screen time. It helps me keep my anxiety regulated. I need a good planner to make that possible.

Whatever your daily life looks like, if you need some way to keep yourself organized, I suggest finding a planner. That may look differently than mine, but I can’t tell you how much having a planner has helped. I hope I can give a little encouragement or guidance to someone who is flailing trying to figure out how to make this work and make life less stressful. Keeping a schedule this way has aided me in getting my life organized and put my mind at ease that we are fitting everything in.