Let's Get (Re)Organized

I have been drooling over fancy planners for quite some time. I thought at the beginning of the year that I should start one, but I wasn't interested in buying one that I couldn't refill, and I couldn't find one in stock online. Then I discovered MissTiina on Etsy. She sells digital calendars, tabs, and pages that she's designed, and I fell in love. She also has Unplan pages, that let you fill in dates as you need to. This is similar to my Frankenplanner from last year.

The Frankenplanner worked--to an extent--mostly due to its size. It was so large, I couldn't carry it with me, nor could I put it away anywhere in my room without putting it on the bookshelf or with the files in my closet. This put it out of sight, out of reach...and eventually out of use. I realized when I started the planner hunt this December that I needed something that could easily live in my purse. MissTiina has page sizes that are small enough for a little binder. This was just what I wanted. Nothing made me happier than ordering a pre-made planner instead of obsessively gathering printables from around the internet. Plus, MissTiina has a Valentine's Day sale going on. I love me a sale.

I went to Hell** after work to buy the tiny binder to put my pages in...and of course they had nothing. Literally nothing--the only binders they had were HUGE three-ring binders. Also, the whole office supply section had been trashed either during or after inventory, so if they had something, it was underneath a metric ton of displaced merchandise.

I left.

I spent my night looking up different planner covers online. Of course, I fell in love with the most expensive thing, a personal-sized Filofax. This is mostly because people have done such amazing things to make their Filofaxes pretty. They use them like mini-scrapbooks or smash books. I love that. Seriously, do a search on Pinterest and check out how gorgeous people make their planners.

Now, it is stupid for me to spend that much when I don't know how good I'll be about actually keeping up with using a planner, but I do want something in the same size. This means a trip to Staples (the closest office supply store) tonight to see what I can see. Hopefully they'll have a reasonably-priced planner I can use while I see how well I like carrying a planner around.

I'll only have more use for one of these when I start up online grad school in the near future, to keep track of what I've done, what I need to do, what's on the syllabus...so I also want one that won't break into pieces with extended use.

Given my two requirements: low price and durability, I can confidently say I won't find anything to suit. We'll see.

* I wasn't given anything for this post--except the current 40% off sale you can get using the code WITHLOVE, good until February 15th.

** Walmart