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Life is full of seasons of change and for the first time this year I will be using two different planners. One planner will be the one I always use each year, which is my 7 Step Homeschool Planner and the other one is a new personal planner.

My homeschool planner is considerably thinner now that I am down to homeschooling one son and my personal life after school (taking care of aging parents, guiding young adults on career and education and keeping up with my husband’s new career) is considerably fuller.

Choosing a personal planner can be just as overwhelming as choosing as a homeschool planner.

Because I had used a personal planner in my LBK (life before kids) when I was important busy working in a law office, I had some previous experience using one prior to switching to exclusively using a homeschool planner. Life comes full circle for sure.

Personal Planners that Fits a Homeschooling Lifestyle (or don’t)

I’m sure my personal planner will be a journey like my 7 Step Homeschool Planner has been, but there are few questions I had to answer before I chose one.

I thought you could benefit from my brainstorming questions.

One/ How big do you want it? Size matters.

One reason for choosing a personal planner is because I still want this baby to fit in my purse. This is the hardest part for me because by nature, I tend to like large size planners, which give me a lot of room to write.

But I’m sucking it up and going tighter and smaller to keep my personal planner fitting in my purse because I need to be able to not carrying too much in my hands as I take my mother in law back and forth to the doctor for her appointments. Besides my other hand is for more important things like coffee or iced tea.

Pointer: Remember if you use a smaller planner, you may need to only keep half the year in your planner for the daily pages. I’m keeping the glance at a view for the whole year, but scaled back my daily pages to only 6 months because I want journal pages to write notes in. I’ll see how I survive.

Two/ Do you want to reuse a binder or choose one already spiral bound?

I know that I will be using my binder a lot and so I wanted one with rings and chose a faux leather one to refill. If I stick with this method, I think I would be willing to cough up the bucks for a leather one that will last.

But that also leads me to my next question.

Three/ What type of refillable calendar pages do you want?

Knowing that I want as much room to write on my journal pages and daily pages, I chose a one-page-per-day layout.

Four/ What type of journal pages do you want?

I chose simple colored pages because I’m still waffling about how I want to make my lists and take notes, so I chose Filofax ruled and plain personal size pages to keep it simple.

Five/ What kind of extras (i.e. glam) do you want to add to your planner?

Then my favorite part is choosing all the pretty stuff to go in it. I do like some of it, but I’m not into turning my planner into a scrapbook. Who has time for that while homeschooling? Inspiration and enhancing yes, but dawdling and idling no.

Having inspiration in my planner is important to me as I use it everyday. Like my 7 Step Homeschool Planner, I have to add a few smokin’ hot things I love.

Here is what I’ve added so far.

Posh bookmarks.
Michaels carries a lot of the Recollections brand, which I like for my planner.

Planner Charm (everybody needs one or two)

Here is the planner charm I using right now which is the Creative Year Sky Blue Tassel & Feather Planner Charm.

Then you never want to leave home without having an accessory pouch and well if it’s gold, it just makes things better! ha.

Not only can you include in the pouch a few mentionables like paper clips, small tube of lip balm and a rubber band, but any small unmentionable you want to as well. (wink).

I got my gold accessory pouch from Michaels and used it this year and I think I can get another years use out of it.

And then I love having more than one way to spot sections in my planner, so I have been using these Creative Year Blush Magnetic Bookmarks too.

Will you be using two planners this next year too?

It has been a longggggg time since I have and I’m so giddy to jump into using it and I’m sure I will have some pros and cons next year after I start using it and I won’t forget to share them with you

Hugs and love ya,

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Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.

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