the search for the perfect planner

I am very serious about my planner.

I can’t just pick a random agenda off the shelf and call it a day. No, searching for my planner for the upcoming year was a process that took a lot of time, a lot of searching both in person and online, and a lot of preparation.

Though the year is only just over half way through my, preparation for 2019 had to start early. Planners and Agendas come out in the summer, ready for students and people who start their years off in September, like I did for many years of my life. However this year I am wanting to start my planner off in January to mark my first year without starting school in September.

In my previous post that I wrote about planning: yes, planning is my hobby I went through the planner that I had for the past year and will continue to use until the new year. It is an Orange Circle Studio Planner that has vertical days and bands at the bottom that I use to mark things such as workouts, meals, and work schedules. I really liked this vertical layout after a few years of horizontal ones. This year I couldn’t seem to find the same planner however, as the only ones that had the same layout were tiny, and the bigger ones were not coil bound or were colourful and not what I was looking for.

My other requirements that I was looking for were:

• Same amount of space for all 7 days of the week (I hate planners that have half the amount of space for Saturday and Sunday)
• Coil Bound (regular notebooks won’t fit the amount of stickers and add ins I use in my planner)
• Large (about the same size as a regular sheet of paper)
• Not ugly
• No colour/completely black and white
• Not too many embellishments
• Not too much money

No matter how many times I went into Chapters or looked up planners on the internet I couldn’t find anything that I loved. I was starting to get worried as I knew that a few more planners would come out at the end of the year, but I knew most of them were coming out now and this was my best chance.

I was starting to give up hope of finding something that met all of my desires right before our trip to Portland. I knew there were a few different stationary shops throughout town and I made it part of my day to visit them. While the first two were very adorable and had a lot of really cute things, they didn’t have the perfect planner. Finally we walked into Paper Source, a chain of stationary stores throughout the United States that was don’t have up here in Canada.

I bounded straight for the Planners and that is where I found it, the perfect planner. It managed to hit every single one of my boxes plus a few extras. It starts in January so I don’t have to rip out the pages that I am not using, it has tabs for each month which is a nice touch, and it feels very well made.

The few things it doesn’t have, such as the rows across the bottom I can make myself with a pen or washi tape and while the columns seem a bit skinnier it will still fit the stickers that I like to use in my planner.

Now I just have to put the planner away for 4 more months until I can start using it. Planning is not just a way for me to stay organized, but it is also a way that I can look back at my life and all the amazing adventures that I have experienced.

Do you like to plan? Paper or electronic? Do you have a favourite planner?