Plan-It 7x9 inch planners

You may have seen my previous posts on the Plan-It planners, which are excellent. Now I'm very excited that this year they have added a new, larger size planner to their lineup!

Click here to see my review of the 5 1/2 by 8 inch Plan-It planners. The new larger planners measure 7 by 9 inches, with the same great layout.

These planners go from August 2011 through the end of July 2012. They have the same great layout and features of the other Plan-It planners, with more space to write.

Below are the Plan-It 2011-2012 (7"x9") Fashion Day Planner with the Paisley Bird cover
and the Plan-It 2011-2012 (7"x9") Fashion Day Planner with the Black cover

Inside the front cover there is a 2011 year at a glance reference calendar. The first page has spaces to write your contact info and where to find Plan-It online including their website www.plan-itplanners.com, Facebook and Twitter.

The next page has a list of holidays during the school year, then a page to record your class schedule:

At the beginning of each month, embedded in the weeks are monthly calendars with the month across the two-page spread. This has loads of great features like space for notes, holidays printed on the days, and monthly tabs to help you find the month you're looking for when planning ahead. We all know how much I love monthly tabs!!

The weekly spread has loads of room to write, and the weekend days are big!  Hooray!

At the back of the book there are a couple of pages for addresses and notes:

The last page is a handy place to write frequently used numbers.  Inside the back cover is a reference calendar for 2012.

The book measures only 5/16 of an inch thick, so even though the pages are larger the book is still extremely lightweight and portable. The rounded corners make it even more streamlined so it will have no problem going everywhere with you in your bag.

So, if you are looking for a planner with a large weekly layout, months on two pages, in the academic year format with pretty covers (and at a GREAT price) you'll definitely want to check out the Plan-It 7x9 inch planners!  Well done Plan-It!

Many thanks to Plan-It for sending me these products as samples to review!

What's your most treasured planner?

Today I was reading through my Ghost of Planners Past series and looking at the planners themselves. These are some of my most treasured planners along with my Septanote, my French Textagenda I used in grad school and my day per page planner I used the year my daughter was born.

Steve wrote a couple of posts on Philofaxy discussing the value of using your planner as a diary and showing some pages from the Filofax diary inserts he used during the year his son was born which contain some very special memories.

Do you have planners from times in your life that you treasure?

Have you chosen your 2012 planner yet?

'Tis the season to get next year's planner, if you haven't already!

Students or parents with kids in school probably already have next year's planner, or an academic-year planner to be able to plan the entire school year all in one book. 17 or 18 month planners are especially useful because you can use them to plan the school year and the rest of next year too.

Folks who use calendar-year planners are buying next year's now as future appointments start popping up into the new year.

Do you know what planner you will use next year? Have you bought it yet? Will you use the same planner as this year or are you looking for something new?

If you need some help deciding what planner to use, you're in the right place! I have lots of suggestions.

Take a look in the sidebar under Helpful Posts to see tips on choosing your planner. These posts will help you decide what format (daily, weekly, monthly), size and layout (vertical or horizontal days) will work best for you.

If you want to see reviews of specific planners, look at Browse Planner Brands and Formats.

And if you have any questions or want some advice, please leave a comment! I'll be happy to help.

So, what planner are YOU going to use in 2012?

Monsieur leather notebook

When I opened this handsome notebook, my husband immediately said, "That's mine."  He's normally a Moleskine man so I was a little surprised when he was so adamant about this notebook! Except not really. I should have known he would nab this one because it is Just. That. Cool.

Monsieur Notebooks (http://monsieurnotebook.com/)  are hand bound in India from a single piece of vegetable-tanned leather.  The leather is thick and soft with natural markings on it and has that great leather smell to it.  I'll show you the other great features of this notebook in a sec but first I want to point out the price of these notebooks: In the UK these are priced at 9.99 pounds for the A6 size, 12.99 for A5 and 21.99 for A4!  Those are spectacular prices for real, handmade leather notebooks!

Here is the back of the notebook where you can see more information on the band.

The cover is flexible without being floppy:

Here is the cover without the packaging. The color and texture of the leather are amazing. There is an elastic closure.

On the back cover you can see the only branding is the logo subtly embossed in the bottom right corner.

Inside the front cover there is a place to write your name and any other information you like such as contact information, contents etc.

Inside the front cover is the brand marking:

The pages are lined with 6 mm ruling (same width as Moleskine ruling). The paper is very light ivory, lighter in color than Moleskine paper.  There is a real ribbon placemarker which is color matched to the cover, a very elegant touch.

The entire look of the book is sophisticated and luxurious. And again I just can't get over the price! You get an amazing notebook for the money.

My husband took this to work with him before I could do any ink tests on it, but you can see how it performs with a variety of inks in these excellent reviews by Ms Logica and Notebooktivity.  The paper in this notebook is 90 gsm, thick and smooth.

Starting this month the Monsieur Notebooks collection will include fountain pen friendly notebooks with 100 gsm paper! The notebooks are available in a variety of sizes and papers, portrait and landscape layouts. The leather covers come in this brown color as well as black, green, pink, turquoise, navy blue and red.  Click here for more information on the selection available.

Monsieur Notebooks are available at PaperNation.co.uk and you can also click here to see more retailers. There are stockists throughout the UK and Ireland, and even in Hungary!

Many thanks to Monsieur Notebooks for sending me this excellent notebook to review. From my impressions and my husband's immediate reaction, I'll say you have a winner here!

Philofaxy All Stars Guest Post: Imy's Filofax Flex!

Many thanks to Imy of Imy's World for this Philofaxy All Stars guest post of her Filofax Flex!!! I haven't seen any of the Flex products in person so I was very interested in her post!  Here's Imy:

I am doing a guest post for the Philofaxy AllStars Tour!

I wanted to write a review on the Flex by Filofax for a long time then I offered to do it for Plannerisms and luckily she said YES!



I have it in the LOVELY Magenta, it also comes in Black and Slate!

Mine is A5 but it also comes in Pocket and Slim, the range of sizes Is very similar to Personal, Pocket and A5 Filofaxes!

The cover is priced at £27.00 which comes with a Pen Holder and a Jot Pad!

I ordered the Note Book, Pull out 2011 Diary and a 2011/2012 Diary!

The Notebook comes in different thicknesses a layouts, you can choose between plain or ruled. The thicknesses you can choose from are either 80 pages or 256 pages! I only have the Ruled 80 Pages, as you can see its just the right thickness as it is!

If you want to replace the Jot pads after using them, it will cost £10 and you get a set of 3 with ONLY 16 sheets, they do tear off but this feels like quite a high price for what it is! It may be very nice paper but still I find it far too expensive!

To get extra pen holders its £3, but you can only get extra ones in GREY! There is one other thing you can do with them, and that is hole punch them, and put them in a Filofax so you can have extra pen loops, also once you have done that you could stick post its on the card! Well that is a small idea I have!

So I will now compare it to my A5 Adelphi to show you the size comparison, which to be honest isn’t too much different!



The only difference really is length they are virtually the same width!



As you can see its actually thicker than the Adelphi, which is a Slimline A5, there both the same width.



Here is the pen loop and the Jot Pad which I REALLY do not like because of the price, its just so ridiculous! But I’m sure you can find a similar note pad! But still I was not happy with the width and the cost of it!

I find that the pen holder is really tight tho and it struggles to put thicker pens in even though its elastic, its not very stretchy elastic!

There are plenty of pockets inside the Flex there are 6 credit card slots and a larger slot below!

There are 4 slots for diaries and notepads, contact pages etc, what ever you want to put in!

You can also fit different standard A5 notebooks in!



I love the colours of the covers for the notepads and diaries it goes so well with the pink.

The inside of the notepad.



I love the inside coves to the notepads too, it just reminds me of something from school!





The paper inside the notebook and diary and all the other paper used for these books is beautiful! There so lovely to write on, there like the Cotton Cream paper, its so nice to write on and feels very nice and smooth for writing on!

But then the majority of the paper in the normal Filofax is lovely like the colour but obviously the diary paper on normal Filofax pages are a lot thinner and not very nice, I think Filofax should really start to make pages using the paper in the Flex!

It would be great if the diary had holes in and also so you are able to rip it out! I know that a lot of other people have had that idea as well! So its obviously a great idea!

I find that when you move the flex a bit it can cause a bit of trouble as the notebooks can slide out and you have to keep pushing them back in!



The diary is just your usually week to view layout, with a notes section which gives you 8 equal boxes, on the pages it shows you the month to view, In the notes section!

It’s the same lovely paper, I don’t need to bore you all with the paper again hehe

The week to view diary I have looks like this: -



it’s the same lovely paper and there is plenty of room to write peoples birthday and other events!

What I would love to see from the new edition of the Flex if they carry on with it is: -

Leather covers
Day per page, but in 12 books, so you only have to carry one month at a time
Month to two pages, with a whole 12 months in
Finance books
Travel book
City planner
Similar things to what you get with the Filofax but set things! It would add so much to it!

Cannot wait to see Edition 2!

But for now I cannot leave my perfect A5 Adelphi!



See are you can see I wrote all this in my Filofax rather than my Flex but I don’t think I will be changing unless they add so many more things!

I agree with what others have said it’s a glorified notebook! But I feel as if it had other things done it may become a great change from a Filofax!

But all the Filofax lovers out there, the one thing that may be useful are, like uni maybe as a notebook as its such lovely paper or college just for making notes outside of your Filofax!

I hope you have enjoyed it!

Thank you so much Laurie for letting me write for Plannerisms!

Many thanks again to Imy for this wonderfully detailed post and excellent photos!

How do you store your planners?

Reader Tina emailed me recently asking how I store my planners long-term.  I actually keep all of my planners and notebooks out on shelves (as shown here) because I refer to them often. I do keep my journals in a fireproof safe though, just in case.

But it's a great question, and I'd love to know how you store your old planners, notebooks and/ or journals long-term. Do you use lidded bins?  A cardboard box? An archival storage system of some kind?

Please leave a comment!

Copyright notice

I hate to do a post about this, but unfortunately it is necessary.

I have discovered that someone (who I will not name here) has lifted text from my blog and used it in their own blog post, then called it a "guest post." I'm sure they meant no harm by it, but please realize this is copyright infringement.  The person did credit me, but because they used my actual text without asking my permission, it violates copyright laws.

I only just discovered this because I follow them on Twitter and clicked on one of their tweets about a new blog post. Imagine my surprise to see my own text incorporated into their post as a "guest post" from me.

If you would like to refer to my posts in your own blog, you can create a link to my actual post. If you would like me to write a guest post for your blog, please contact me and I would be more than happy to talk to you about it.

But please, whatever you do, don't use my actual text in your post without asking me first. Even if you credit me, it's still copyright infringement.

Please respect online authors and our materials.

Thank you!!!

**Note: I previously had my Copyright notice at the bottom of my main page, and I have now moved it up to the top of my sidebar so it is visible to everyone who reads my blog, to avoid any confusion!

2012 WeekDate weekly planner

Take a look at this new cover style for the 2012 WeekDate planner! This is the Bohemian cover. I thought it looked extra cool with my swimming pool behind it:

There is a great selection of cover colors and styles available for the 2012 WeekDate planners, click here to see all the cover choices.

Several weeks ago I was desperately trying to order this planner but was having PayPal difficulties. Specifically, my order originating from Indonesia set off PayPal's fraud warning and froze my account! Grr!  I contacted Weekdate to see if there was another way I could order, and Kay very generously offered to send me one as thanks for my previous WeekDate reviews.  Many, many thanks to Kay for sending me this 2012 WeekDate planner, I know you don't normally send samples so I really appreciate this!!

If you have a lot of recurring weekly and/ or monthly events, the WeekDate planner is the one for you. You write your recurring events only once, and they stay visible all the time so you don't have to re-write them every week or month. And if your schedule changes, you erase it once and write in the new schedule. No more flipping week to week changing events!

The WeekDate's recurring schedule system is also wonderful for writing in your routines to keep you on track for exercise, meal planning, FlyLady Zone work, and anything else you need to be reminded to do on a weekly or monthly basis.

Below is the WeekDate planner completely open. The tri-fold format opens out big and folds up small for lots of writing space in a very slim and portable planner.

At the top is the Monthly recurring section, in the middle is the current week, and at the bottom is the Weekly recurring section. When you turn the pages, only the current week is turned so your monthly and weekly recurring items stay visible at all times.  The days of the week are color coded to correspond to the appropriate week on the monthly recurring section so you always know where you are in the month. The back sides of the weekly pages are lined for lists, notes, financial records etc. so this is a week + notes format, with all seven days as full-size columns.

Click here for more information on How It Works.

The first page of the WeekDate planner has a short explanation of how to use it, click on the photo for a larger view:

The back side of the front page has Hints and Tips for using your WeekDate planner:

The inside of the front cover has lines to write your contact info in case your planner is lost:

Inside the cover there is a removable card for frequently used or emergency contacts:

Inside the very back of the planner is a removable card for annually-recurring events like birthdays, anniversaries, insurance renewals etc. that you can use year after year:

The back outside cover has the entire year at a glance:

And the last page of the planner has all of next year at a glance:

Below are some photos of the weekly pages showing examples of what types of holidays and useful reminders are pre-printed on the day spaces. Click on the photos for a larger view.

US public holidays are all indicated (like MLKJ Day):

Other holidays like Valentine's Day are too. (And there at the right of the page you can see the tear-off edge so you flip directly to the current week, and the month tab to find the month you're looking for easily.)

Halloween, and Daylight Savings Time! So you don't forget to set your clocks:

Earth day and Tax Day too:

Here is the planner with the previous weeks' pages folded under the planner, which it does easily:

In my post on ways to use the WeekDate planner (click here to see) I have more details about the color-coding system for the weeks and monthly recurring system,the Monthly Set Days section, weekly reminders, using the planner for FlyLady Zone work etc.

Check out my review of the 2011 WeekDate planner here, with more photos of the inside of the planner and all its features.


You can see all of the WeekDate products at www.weekdate.com.

WeekDate DOES ship internationally, click here to see their shipping rates. When I lived in Scotland I had my WeekDate planner shipped to me there and it arrived quickly and with no problems.

If you want to start the WeekDate system right now you are in serious luck because there are just a few 2011 WeekDate planners left, and they are on sale! Click here to get yours before they are gone so you can start WeekDating right away!

I own several WeekDate products including the Wall calendar (click here for my review), the WeekDate White wipe-off wall planner (click here for my review), and the weekly planners so if you have any questions about the products post a comment and I'll be happy to answer!

Philofaxy All Stars guest post: Femke and her FlyLady Filofax

Many thanks to Femke for this awesome guest post on how she uses her Filofax as her FlyLady Control Journal! I know this is a topic that's been talked about a lot recently, so I really appreciate all the details!!

I’m using my Filofax as a guide for Fly Lady, to clean my house and keep up with everything. I kept our house clean but I still felt like I couldn’t have people over unexpectedly. I’d heard about Fly Lady before, but at one point I decided to just give it a try.

I’m still a Fly Baby but my Control Journal is filled to the brim. If you’re not familiar with Fly Lady, I advise you to check the website, here. Even if you don’t fully use Fly Lady, there are some great tips for keeping your house clean and neat.

When I open my Filofax (an A5 Domino Snake), I see a photo of myself running the 5K last year. This is a motivation photo, because I really want to run another 5K, but haven’t trained in a year.

First off, I start with the emergency contacts. This is the first page when you open my Filofax. I don’t have many of them, just both of our parents, our doorkeeper (very luxurious, since we live in a large building), our insurance advisor (he does all our insurances) and the vet. I advise everyone to keep a list like this in a safe place, because you never know when you need it.

Tab 1 and 2 are my weekly calendar and monthly calendar. In my weekly calendar, I write down the list of house chores, the weekly chores and this week’s zone. In the middle of the week, I keep my to do list for the zones. I mark the things I’ve done with pencil and at the end of the week erase them. I also write down my moods and if I have a migraine or slight headache, as part of my mission 101. In my monthly calendar I write down the birthdays and important days for that month.

Tab 3: my to do lists. Here I keep the lists for the weekly zones but also stuff I still need to do for my control journal, or what I need to buy. I don’t keep my personal to do’s in this Filofax, this is only for things I need to do around the house.

Tab 4: is where I keep all my lists. Daily, weekly, monthly routines, a list of the zones and what needs to be done, and my pantry and master grocery list is what you can find in there.

Tab 5: following that, I keep my “Mission 101” list in there, including my book list and movie list. This is the personal section of my Control Journal.

Tab 6 is my addresses tab. I use the A-Z dividers for that as well. In here I keep every address I may ever need. I don’t cross out, I just add.

Here I also keep a list of the Christmas cards I’ve sent out last year and from whom we received a card. This way I can easily revise our list.

Even if you’re not using the Fly Lady concept, I would really recommend a Filofax, or even a folder in a specific place with an address book (or list) and emergency list. Because it is true, you never know what may happen or when you need a specific phone number. 

Thanks again to Femke for all the great details, and the inspiration to set up my own FlyLady/ Household/ Motivational Filofax!!

Experiment revisited: Large Moleskine Day Per Page

I know what you're thinking: "How many times is she going to try (and fail) with a day per page planner?"  Well, follow me here and see what I'm thinking:

Back in December I tried using my large Moleskine day per page as my planner. I was extremely inspired by other people's usage methods of it, and even my husband suggested I use it (which you can read about here). Predictably, it failed rather quickly, which day per page planners tend to do for me because I have a hard time planning ahead effectively seeing only one day per page.

Then in January (in this post) I lamented the fact that I haven't kept a journal in a long time, but when I was doing my large day-per-page experiment I captured memories that otherwise would have slipped away. In that post I wondered if I should use the large daily as my planner and journal combined. But at the time I was gearing up for my big move from Scotland to Indonesia, and I needed a big weekly planner to get me through my move.  Now, nine months later and looking back at my question in January, the answer is: I wish I'd used the large daily as my planner and journal combined. If I had, I would have captured so many more memories.

As I wrote in my Consistency is Key post, I've finally realized it matters less whether I have a perfect capturing system. What matters is that things get captured. In an ideal world, I would have time each day to sit and write in my journal. But that requires me to get and open my journal and sit down to write in it. In reality, it's my planner that's in my hands throughout the day so if something's going to get written, it will be in there.

I went back through some of my old posts including Past vs. Future, Planner Permanence and Planning Tool/ Record of Events and noticed the theme. I'm craving the permanence of having a record of my life in a bound book. Since I can't seem to get myself to journal despite my desire to do so, I'm going to do a combined planner/ journal in my large daily Mole.  Plus my ever-wise husband has a great point: combining planning/ recording and journaling in one book will create a very complete record of my life at the time.

I was also inspired by this post on the Quo Vadis blog, scroll down to #6 where she talks about how she uses her Textagenda (day per page academic-year) as a combined planner and journal.  Also I looked back through my Textagenda from last year, and even though I didn't use it for very long the combination of planning and journaling it contains is now priceless.

I hear you: how will I plan ahead with my day per page planner? I have a couple of strategies.  In the front of the Moleskine there are monthly planners, and in the Large size planners the day spaces in the monthly calendars are big enough to write in a fair amount of detail. I also use my WeekDate Wall calendar on the fridge so my family can see it. Because it has weekly recurring events visible all the time, I can picture my week easily.

I'm using my beautiful brushed leather Success Choice cover on my large daily Moleskine, which fits easily with room to spare. Some people have asked me how I'm protecting the leather of this cover and the answer is, I'm not. In fact just today I got something sticky on it and so now there's a mark. I try not to worry about it, it just adds character and the fact is it's bound to get marks on it because my life is messy! The Success Choice cover has a fabric ribbon placemarker, so I use it to mark the current month and the Moleskine's ribbon placemarker to mark today, for easy access between my monthly and daily views.

Because I'm using my daily planner as my journal too, I use it to capture ideas, thoughts, quotes and other random things. One thing I am committed to doing is writing at the bottom of the page at least one positive thing each day. It will help me see the good in each day, which will be an especially useful exercise on those really aggravating days!  And it will be a great record of things I enjoy in my life.

I already have the 2012 large Moleskine day per page planner, so at the end of this year I can continue straight into it. 

So, please wish me luck in this new experiment! I hope it will be permanent!