Staying organized.

I wanted to share my new planner and daily notepad that I'm going to use this year to stay organized and on track.

It fits quite nicely atop my newly organized mail-center.

Here's the planner.

I purchased it on sale, PLUS with my employee discount, for around $5 at my job at the bookstore.

It's got a whole page per day with time slots every half hour from 7am until 8pm. I'm thinking those times are reasonable! It's got bible verses as well as a bit of a devotional for each day. That was one of the reasons I chose this particular planner.

The second main reason I chose this planner was because it has a "Budget" page at the beginning of each month.

I have to be honest...this is not something I was planning to do...a budget, that is. But I took this as a big hint that I needed to work on our budget. And this would be a great way to get started. Notice it's empty. Ahem. Not to worry...it's only the 3rd of the month! I figure this whole budget thing is going to take a while to figure out. I hope to have a better report in a month or two!

I also found this daily notepad at the dollar store right before Christmas. And I'm loving it!

It's got "to-do" slots...and little boxes to check off once it's been DONE.

It's got a daily quote...

A daily word and definition...

And a bit of trivia. Not pictured are the names of well-known people born on that particular day. Kinda fun!

So far I'm excited about getting organized. This planner and notepad set-up is not the exact idea I had in my mind when searching for the best way to stay organized. My creative side needed the planner to be aesthetically pleasing. My collector side needed it to have pockets and pouches. And my perfectionist side said, "none of these will do!". But I had to quiet her down because she tends to ruin everything. She gets in the way of getting something started...because if I can't do something perfectly, then she talks me out of doing anything at all.

So...in the end I was able to shut her up and get a start with something that is "better than nothing". She's not happy with me at the moment...but that's OK. She'll get over it...

In the meantime, I need to go fill in some time slots and write down due dates for my bills! This is going to be a good thing...