Having a Plan. . . er

The fourth of July week, DH, the Kiddos and I went camping for four days with some military friends from Virginia. We had a great time!

When I got home on that Thursday it was to find about 4 messages on the phone-I had forgotten that I was due to volunteer at the food pantry and babysit a friends child for the afternoon on Thursday then all day on friday.

Oops. Not good.

For years I always used a planner to keep track of the things I needed to do. I don’t remember exactly when I started, but I do remember having one my freshman year in highschool-and I probably had one even before that. Through the years I had used many different configurations. In college and in the Army I never would have been where I was supposed to be without one.

Then about 2000 I switched over to a palm pilot. At that time I was at a desk job, and I started using the calendar program in Microsoft Outlook-mostly because I could set reminders to pop up on my screen 1/2 hour before meetings and appointments. That way even if I wasn’t paying attention to the clock I wouldn’t miss a meeting. Well, the problem with that is I tend to only write a thing in one place. So when I put it in Outlook, I rarely remembered to also put it in my paper planner. So I’d get home and have no idea what I had going on the next morning. Hence the palm pilot. DH bought me one that would sync with my computer at work-all I had to do was put it in the cradle, push a button, and the info was copied from the desktop to the palm pilot. Life was good.

I used that system for about 4 years, then I got out of the military. All of the sudden I had much fewer things to keep track of each day. Without meetings and internal tasking due dates, all I had was a few Dr. appts and personal comittments to keep track of. My older sis, Amy, suggested that I use one of those little checkbook size monthly calendars. You can pick them up just about anywhere, including the dollar store. That served me very well. I put my Mops meetings, DH pool leauge nights, the kids nursery school days and all appointments in there, and still never filled it up. Plus it fit easily in my purse, so I usually had it with me.

Then that 4th of July memory fiasco hit and I realized that the checkbook calendar just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. With a work schedule (limited as it is) all of my volunteer commitments, the immentent school year for Princess to keep track of, as well as MOPS, Drs appts etc, well I needed more room. And I needed to remember to start checking it reguarly again.

So I pulled out some of the planner binders I still had (because as a frugalite I wouldn’t throw something like that away! The used inserts yes, the actual planner binder-NEVER!!) It was one of the medium small ones, the inserts are smaller than a sheet of 8 1/2 by 11 paper folded in half. Then I went searching the internet for free printable planner inserts.

I found a really cool site-DIY Planner-but the sheets either printed out on a half sheet or an index card sized. So I decided to head to Wally World and see what I could find (well actually I checked the local variety store first, but they didn’t have anything).

When I got to the planner aisle, I did a bit of comparing and math and realized that buying the inserts to fit my smaller planner only cost $3 less than buying a new larger planner. So I decided to go with the larger planner so #1 I could use some of the cool free templates at DIY Planner in the future and avoid buying inserts next year and #2 so that I could fold any notes etc printed on regular copy paper in half and still fit them inside the planner.

I bought this cool Franklin Covey Planner (they are like the corporate gurus of time management) that has handles to cary it with, except mine-which looks exaclty like the one in the photo, cost $20 instead of the $99 listed on the web page. OK, the one on the web page is leather, mine is probably pleather. . .

So far I like it, I use it, and I think it was a good investment.

Coming soon more organization tips and why organization is frugal.