Planner Organization

Being an organized college student working two jobs and being a member of a sorority, my planner is my life.  I write everything that goes on in my world in that planner and I rely on it to keep track of everything going on in my life.  At the beginning of this semester, I purchased a new Vera Bradley student planner in Paisley Meets Plaid.  I previously had a Lilly Pulitzer planner for 2011-2012, but I did not repurchase because I didn't like how the month tabs were just paper and not laminated.  So far, I have been very happy with the Vera Bradley planner - and I finally reached my happy place with my organization methods for it.  This will just be a look at how I organize my planner and what I have found that works for me!

^MONTH AT A GLANCE ORGANIZATION^

To easily organize my monthly calendar, I somewhat keep it to a minimum.  I only write important events, appointments, meetings, work schedule changes, or birthdays here.  I do not write homework assignments here, because I just want this monthly overview to allow me to see if something would conflict with plans that I already have in place.  Basically, I want to have the ability to look at this calendar and say "Hm, no I can't go to the dinner with so-and-so on Sunday the 9th because I have Recruitment from 9 am to 11 pm."  I use highlighters only for certain events on this calendar.  The yellow highlighter is used for extremely important all-day events, such as a day when classes are cancelled, holidays, midterm, or paydays.  I use the blue highlighter for sorority events that aren't our normal meetings, such as retreat, recruitment, or our dodgeball tournament.  The last thing that I do on my monthly calendar is write the number of the week of class in the margin on the right hand side of the page.  I also do cross off the days as I go in this calendar because it helps me pinpoint where I am in the month without having to search.

^WEEK AT A GLANCE ORGANIZATION^

I use my weekly calendar to write everything else in.  This is where I write all my assignments or studying that I need to do for that day's classes, along with using stickers to mark important appointments, exams, or project due dates.  So, as far as stickers go - I use the rectangular ones and the circular ones.  The rectangular stickers are for events and appointments: PINK are for social events, GREEN are for appointments, and YELLOW are for paydays.  The circular stickers are for school work related dates: PINK are for projects due dates, and ORANGE are for exams, tests, and quizzes.  Aside from the stickers, I write important events or reminders in the top or bottom of the box, and sometimes highlight them using the same highlighting system from the monthly calendar.  I also occasionally use post-it notes for reminders or lists of things that I need to do during that week - for which I have many different sizes and colors of post-its.

I hope that this was helpful or insightful to someone, seeing as it is my passion to be organized and find ways to become even more organized.  If you want anything explained in more detail, I am more than happy to go more in depth if asked to!  Hope you enjoyed this first organizational post, there are many more to come!!

Much love, 

Jen