My new planner

In my previous post, I had indicated that I was super excited about this new planner, so as promised here is more information.  A few months ago, my friend HRM, a fellow postdoc, but newly appointed faculty mentioned to me that she was dropping a lot of money on the Day Designer (http://www.daydesigner.com), which she thought was very suited to her needs- a planner for "adults", she said.  I looked it up and while it looked pretty, it was too blah for me.  So I went on Etsy and obsessed about day designer printables for a week and figured out that either I liked everything or nothing. I have to be honest - in total I spent about 40$ on putting this planner together and also none of the actual pages are mine (except the front page)- they were all bought on Etsy, I just put together the planner based on what I knew I would find helpful.  This is the finished product.

I designed the cover on Adobe Illustrator (the infinite hours spent on working on paper/thesis figures comes in handy!!). I got it spiral bound at office depot for 5 $ and it took like three minutes for them to do it. For every month, there is a monthly calendar to give me the overview of that month. This is followed by a monthly budget for the house, because lets face it, while I am scientist and we are not supposed to actually have a home life,  I am also a wife and the home organizer :).

The monthly budget pages are then followed by overview of the week- which helps me plan meals. 

The week pages (four of them) are followed by the daily schedule. 

The list of steps in an experiment I am doing is listed under lab work, along with another other major work-related activities.  The gridded section at the bottom is for any pre-existing appointments so they are front and center and I can see them throughout the day.  I also have a section for what I am making for dinner that day. Along with any reminders I may need for any personal errands etc.,  This particular day looks relatively less crazy, but I have noticed that things get added to these columns as the day progresses.  I also decided to bind together only work days of the week for every month (this does include holidays, as we all know that both the hubs and I often work on holidays!- sad but true).  This led to about 300 pages for just 6 months, so I decided to do it in 6 month installments, so my current planner goes from July-December and I get to do this again for Jan-June.  I thought it would be awkward carrying it around, it hasn't been- it probably helps that I am totally in love with my planner now. Talk to me in a few months :). Also here are the links for where I got the original pages in case you guys end up liking it: https://www.etsy.com/transaction/1045002401 and https://www.etsy.com/transaction/1041058681.  I would like to state that Miss Tina's unplan planner pages are the best! they rock!. They are just so pretty!!. 

Toodles,

S