My book of Post-It notes :)

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that I am not the most organized person in the world, though I do try very hard!  I've found that the easiest way to keep myself on track is to write everything down on paper.  And I do mean, everything!  The problem is keeping up with it all!

I keep a large binder that sits on my desk that I use to hold things that I want to keep handy.  It's mostly filled with prayer lists, scripture studies, recipes, patterns, and other miscellaneous things that I stuff inside whenever I clean off my desk.  If you were to ever come across this binder and flip through the pages, one of the first things that you would notice is my obsession with Post-It notes.

It's true.  That's my confession of the day.  I absolutely love those wonderful, colorful squares of sticky paper.  Most of my personal space is littered with those handy colored squares, containing hastily scribbled to-do lists, reminders, and random thoughts or quotes.  Those little sticky notes are what help me keep my sanity.  My short-term memory is...well...shall we say, lacking!  However, they do tend to pile up, making the task of remembering where I put the one that I need rather difficult.  A bit more organized way of keeping up with things was definitely in order.

So, a few months ago, I began the process of putting together together a homemade daily/weekly/monthly planner to add to my binder.  I have found that I enjoy having my time planned out on paper, whether I actually follow it to the letter or not.  The satisfaction that comes from organization is worth the time spent putting it all down.  So, with this goal in mind, I set to work trying to decide what format to use.

I spent ridiculous amounts of time browsing through free printables that other lovely ladies have created and posted online, but I never seemed to find one that suited me.  I suppose that part of the problem was that I'm too practical.  The idea of printing off an new page for every single day didn't sit well with me.  Not that I'm a tree hugger, but it just seemed wasteful and it would also take up a lot of room!

So, I continued searching, and one day I found an idea on Pintrest.  (Don't you just love Pintrest?????)  After mulling it over for a while, I came up with a way to make it my own.  It involves the use of Post-It notes.  PERFECT!!!!!!

This was the original idea:

This functions as a To-Do/Project planner.  One side is labeled, "Urgent" and the other, "Not so urgent".  You can move the notes from one side to the other as deadlines near and then throw them away when they are completed. 

I decided that I could use the same principle for my daily planner:

Cute, chic, incredibly crafty, it most certainly is not, but sometimes you've just gotta use what you've got!  A little masking tape and markers and I had a daily planner.  I love this because I use the same pages over and over and just add new Post-It notes.  It also takes up a very small part of my binder so I can continue to use it for other things as well. 

In looking for organization ideas on Pintrest and visiting various blogs, I found an idea that I am really excited about.  I have been blogging now for about a year and I absolutely love it!  No really, I love it!  However, so far my posts have been unplanned and rather sporadic.  I have decided that it is high time to change that.

So, I am now in the process of coming up with a schedule for my blog posts (yes, I'm using Post-It notes for this too! :).  I plan to begin using it May 1st.  This schedule contains recipes, tips, maybe eventually a few tutorials, scripture, and a few other things.  I'm really excited about getting started! 

To start with, I made sure to give myself plenty of flexibility (hence, the sticky notes!).  Sometimes my day goes slightly haywire and blog posts are the last thing on my mind, so this definitely isn't something that I plan to get stressed out over. 

In the future, I may be adding a few more things, but for now I'm just going to settle in to working off my "simple" schedule.

Now, that I have my planner made, I am enjoying that wonderful feeling of accomplishment that comes when everything that was planned for the day gets done, and then some!  I love it!