I have a small problem (I know, another one).

I’m slightly OCD, according to others, when it comes to my planner.  As long as I can remember, I’ve always had a planner or agenda of some kind.

It all started when we were given planners at the beginning of the year in school to write our homework down in.  All the schools in my district gave each student a planner.  Or, depending on where you were (like my middle school) they were called “success guides” or “agendas”.  I always thought they were cute; most people thought they were annoying.  They were colorful and had cute sayings in them and some pages had little games on them.  I’m actually pretty sure I still have one somewhere in my house.  I should look for that.

But I had success guides all throughout elementary and secondary school.  So, when I went to college, I needed a planner. I had the habit so ingrained into me that I need to write down homework and assignments and things that I needed to remember, that I HAD to have a planner in college.

I experimented with a few in college and in grad school.  Most were blah, but effective enough.  Even when I wasn’t in school, I felt the need to still keep track of what I needed to do during a day in a planner of some sort. See, starting that habit of writing things down in elementary school has maintained through adulthood.  It’s possible!!

When I started at my old school (not the hellacious one at the beginning of this year; my beloved old school that closed last year), I decided to try the electronic calendar attached to our email.  I actually found it to be annoying.  It took more effort for me to remember to sit down at a computer and select the date and time and type it out.  I still wound up keeping some sort of paper calendar with it.  In fact by the end of last year, I, more or less, had three calendars.  My kids always thought it was funny that I had so many.  I never missed anything though, so HA!

But I remember better when I write things down, so I’ve abandoned electronic calendars.  One of my families last year gave me an Erin Condren gift card because the mom is just as OCD about planners as I am.

I went on the site and was in awe of the pretty.  I’d never heard of these before, but omg…so pretty!!

So, I got a teacher planner and a life planner.  Because, why not. I’ve found with as much as I use the teacher planner that I usually wind up not using the life planner so much because I pretty much write everything in my teacher planner.  In fact, I’ve written so much in it and used it so extensively, when I saw Erin Condren’s 25% off sale for educators, I decided to get a new teacher planner for next year.

AND IT JUST CAME YESTERDAY!

LOOK AT IT!!!!!

My current planner is on the left and my new one is on the right.  I mainly love it because it actually has a school name on it.  Last year for my current one I didn’t really have a school yet (since mine was closing).  Now I actually get to put my school name on there.  Yay!

And as you can see from this years, I do in fact use it a lot.

Again, my current planner is on the left and the new one is on the right.  (And I promise, my desk actually isn’t messy.)

So it’ll be used extensively again next year.  I’m going to spend some time with my new one this summer and re-organize it a bit  Because it is a teacher’s planner and I’m not an actual teacher.  So the layout (while plentiful and useful) needs some tweaking for my needs, which being the planner nerd that I am, excites me to do stuff to it.  There are all kinds of tips and tutorials for using this planner if you’re a teacher.  But none for a counselor, so I think I’m going to rectify that this summer, which is fun to me.

Don’t look at me like that.  I have a pretty planner.  You can have one, too.  Just check out erincondren.com.  Teachers get 25% off until May 31st!  Go look at the pretty!