Planning

I have mentioned before that I love planning.  It is my favorite part of getting things done.  I am a bit of a planner addict.  I have one that I am currently using that I LOVE!  I am a pen to paper kind of girl.  It is called Mom's Tool Belt. I love the day to day part.  It is what I use the most often.  It is completely editable and trust me, I need editable.  I moved things around and added a work area and took out the exercise area and replaced it with a blog section.  (After seeing myself in the mirror I am thinking I should add the exercise part back in! lol)

After I started using the planner the one thing that I didn't like was that it is a lot of black and white.  I thought about printing it off with color in it but I don't like using a lot of color ink.  My very clever hubby had a great solution for me - highlighters!  We set off to the store to find some in a variety of colors and I found - are you ready for it? - erasable highlighters!!!  Genius!  I had no idea they even made such a thing.  I use different colors for different blocks with no real rhym or reason.  I just thought that they add a pretty spash of color.  I guess I could color code things but I really like the colorfulness of my planner.

I do not use this planner for our school, though.  I have created my own workbox planner/schedule that I will use to keep up with what I need to put in workboxes each night and I have subscribed to My Well Planned Day software by Home Educating Family.  It is still in the Beta stages so I haven't gotten a lot done with it.  I cannot wait for the full version to be ready.  It will come with apps and hand scheduling for the entire family on our online devices.  Last year I used the Well Planned Day paper planner.  It didn't work very well for me.  I found that if we missed a day of work it threw a wrench in everything. I didn't like having to erase and move everything.  The new software will allow me to drag and drop our lessons so if something is missed we just move it over and keep right on trucking.  Great solution!  There are however, lots and lots of moms that swear by the paper planner.  I would love to get their binder to keep my planner and important papers in soon, though.  It looks amazing!

For my to-do lists I use a standard spiral notebook and jot down my to-do's and rip them off at the end of the day to start fresh.

What do you use for your planning?