Spring Clean: Planner Edition

Although I tidy up my planner many times throughout the year, when we finally get to spring time I start thinking about all the areas of my life that need tidying. These things include cleaning and tidying tasks, as well as large areas to declutter such as my garage and basement. My jeep gets cleaned, and this time, I thought what a great time to also do a spring refresh on my planner.

A great practice to get into is maintaining your planner on a monthly or quarterly basis. Add this step to your routine (or your goals) so you won’t forget to do it. As with anything, your planner needs regular maintenance to keep it organized and usable.

If you haven’t tackled this ever, I would start by going over the following areas:

1. Dividers & Sections

   Make sure you are using dividers. If you aren’t, how do you find anything? Keep your sections organized by how important the sections are. For example, I have a brain dump right in the front so I can drop ideas here as soon as they enter my head. My next section is my goals (you don’t want to lose track of this - it should really be where all of your plans start from so at the beginning of your planner is a good place). Next is my schedule - I need to easily reference my monthly calendar, weekly tasks and goals and also have access to my daily task lists. Any other sections I add to my planner in order of how much I reference them. See below for a total list of all my planner sections:

My Planner Sections:

1. Goals

2. Brain Dump

3. Inbox

4. Schedule (Monthly, Weekly, Daily)

5. Home (Chores, Travel, other Miscellaneous Home things)

6. Personal (Reading, Kids Info)

7. Projects (Notes, projects, Big Projects)

   2. Assess each area of your planner and see if that section is even necessary. The first way to declutter or clean out your planner is by throwing things away! This is a lot easier if you have a transient system like a disc-bound system or a binder, but can be done in other planners with some creative effort. This also goes for repeating information. (I’m not talking about transcribing things from monthly —> weekly —> daily). I’m talking about having sticky notes in places that have the information you may have already placed in your calendar for example. If you do have sticky notes in your planner, if you can, consolidate the information and put it in the correct place in your planner. (That way, there will be less chance of losing it)!

   3. Remove old months, dates, calendars or anything that is not current. You may want to hold on to older planner pages as a reference. If you want to, create a reference section (or add to it). Take important information from your older planner pages and add it to the reference section ) or your separate reference planner).

   4. Review unfinished tasks and ongoing projects. Add these to the appropriate sections. For example, if I have a task I want to get done right away, I will add it to my daily task list. If I know it can’t be done today, but I want to do it this week, it goes on the weekly list. Otherwise I add it to my monthly list or the inbox so that at least I can remember it for later. Projects should be in the projects section. For me, an example of this would be setting up my garden, cleaning out the garage, etc..

   5. Sometimes I will want to keep a particular insert, but I need to update it. For example, my cleaning routine might change based on the season, but I need to ensure that I have the proper insert, so that I can re-write it at will. I rarely do this however, because it takes forever and it’s a lot of work. I try to create spreads that are usable all year. I have had some papers that get worn out though, so they might require a re-write.

   I think the most helpful thing we can do in our planners is

   1. write down things immediately as they come to us

   2. do a monthly refresh/ reset

   3. reflect on the month - you never know what insights you could come up with!

   Thanks for reading and we will see you next time!

   Sandra 🌸