Sophie (Chanko) Dare

Nothing makes me feel like I've got my life together like checking things off a to-do list, or looking at an organized calendar of what my weeks and months look like. I was never very good at planning out my time when I was in high school or community college, but now that I'm juggling work, relationships, writing for this blog, and online classes, I knew I needed to do a better job of keeping track of everything!

This past fall, I found the perfect solution to all of my planning needs:

THE DETAILS:

- Academic Year format (August 2019 – July 2020)

- Pro (Medium) size

- Weeks beginning with Monday

The most fantastic feature of this planner, in my opinion, is the hourly breakdown of each day. Every day is sectioned out every half hour, from 6am to 10:30pm, so that you can plan how to spend your time throughout the day. This is the most helpful feature by far to keep me on track between going to work, doing work at home, planning meals & shopping lists, and social events.

Here's an example from a couple of weeks ago of what my weekly layouts typically look like. I can block off the times I'll be at work, and on my days off, I use the daily column to make lists of tasks I need to get done. I use the to-do lists on the bottom of the left page to keep track of the blog posts I write, as well as ingredients I need to buy for the date-night dinner recipe I'm making that week.

Amidst all of the functionality, there's still plenty of room for creativity- I love using stickers, markers, and washi tape to decorate each week with a new theme, and most of the time I'll put a Bible verse in the free space at the bottom of the right page. I can keep things as simple & minimalist or creative & artsy as I want from week to week, but it always stays extremely functional and useful.

If you haven't tried organizing your life with a planner like this, I highly recommend giving it a shot. There are plenty of different layouts and formats that all work for different people, but this is the layout that's helped me the most!

Here's some more photos of a few weekly layouts that I was very proud of :)

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