First, this is going to have links in it to things on Amazon. If you purchase any of those items, I may make a commission that won’t cost you anything. Yay for affiliate marketing, right? (I am pretty sure I am doing this affiliate thing wrong, but I am also sure that I need to disclose that I have a financial interest in the things I link. I won’t steer you wrong, in any case.)
With that announcement out of the way, let’s get to it!
I watch a lot of journaling, planning, and note-taking videos on YouTube, hoping that some of that organizational magic will rub off on me. It hasn’t happened so far, but maybe this is the year! I will go forth in faith that this will be the year that I get my act together anyway.
Many YouTube planner enthusiasts seem to love Hobonichi planners, like this absolutely adorable Techo 2025, but I don’t have that kind of money this year, and the Amazon Basics Planner looks good enough to me. It’s available in two sizes: 5.8 inches x 8.25 inches or 8.5 inches x 11 inches. It is undated, so I could theoretically get a couple of them and commit to doing this properly for the next couple of years. The important thing is that it is less than $60.
As you may remember, I already wrote about planners. I just remembered that I bought a couple at Dollar Tree. The ones I already have that I paid $1.25 for are probably what I ought to use.
Honestly, I am not sure if a daily/weekly/monthly planner is granular enough for me. I used to thrive on hourly planners when I was younger because it gives my schedule some structure. I desperately need structure. For fun, I just created a PDF and a Canva template with a color page, a black-and-white page, and a “goals for today” page. Feel free to download the PDF or go over to Canva to change it all up and make it your own.
There are a million planners with a thousand different gimmicks out there in the world, so if you’re following along with me this year, you can find the one that makes you happiest and roll with it. You can spend as little or as much as you want. If you’re going old school or supercheap, you can turn any notebook into a planner with a ruler and some patience.
I already have boatloads of journals that I am setting up for different purposes to see which end up being valuable and actively used and which ones are duds. I have one that’s for fiction writing, one with tabs I am using to track various habits, and a big binder that I am working to set up as The One Binder to Rule Them All, a place to organize a lot of household and personal information, from emergency contacts to medication lists to budgeting. I could print my new Canva designs and put them in there too! (I may come back around to the “everything binder” in another post, to explain the why and the how.)
One thing that I have mostly stuck to in 2024 was shopping in my cabinet at home for notebooks and journals instead of buying more to add to the pile. I always buy them with an idea and good intentions. Now I have enough to open a stationery store.
The Mia Experiment 
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