Confession of the day: I am obsessed with office supplies. Paper, notebooks, planners, sticky notes, pens, markers, pencils, etc. I could tell you about what I have, how I use them, and what I plan to use them for but I doubt you have all day (or all week) to read such a post. I’d probably break the internet. Seriously.
Another confession: Despite this obsession I’ve never used a planner or calendar all the way through from beginning to end. So sad. I eventually stopped buying planners. As a homeschooling mom with 5 kids I’ve never found a planner to suit my needs. For the last two years I’ve made my own planner with our homeschool schedule in it. By “made” I mean I designed all the pages on the computer and printed them off and coil-bound them.
This is last years:
Here is a calendar spread. I used these pages to meal plan as well as keep track of our schedule. Please don’t judge the menu *bows head in shame*.
This is what our homeschool schedule looked like.
I still do this, but the kids each have their own coil-bound book with their schedule and a place to check each assignment off. I may do a separate post on these notebooks later as they’ve been so great for us this year.
Since I separated the kids’ schedules out I don’t really need a hard copy – I do reference the spreadsheet occasionally. So the need for a planner has somewhat diminished. I’ve missed having a notebook/planner for myself. Well imagine my delight when I happened upon a Buzzfeed Nifty video last week about bullet journals!! Where has this been all my life?!?
If you’ve never heard of bullet journalling here’s the skinny: You use a notebook (usually A5 sized) that is either dot or grid and you journal everything and anything you need in your life. If you need a calendar, add one. If you need to track your water intake and exercise, doodle a tracker and fill it in every day. Add encouraging words, quotes, pictures, etc. and doodle to your hearts content. If you’re artsy, sketch or doodle. If you aren’t (like me) just make it pretty however you can: stickers, washi tape, chicken scratch doodles, whatever you can do. The only rule is don’t stress!! Its suppose to be fun, even for semi-OCD folks like me.
I was immediately on Amazon shopping around for a journal and while there are some great options in the end I decided to make use of the supplies I already have. When I started hand lettering I purchased a ream of the really nice inkjet paper that keeps your brush pens from fraying. I pulled out some and printed both sides with a dot grid. For a cover I made use of some cardboard I’ve been saving. (See hoarding random stuff will eventually pay off!!) We’ve owned a coil-binding punch for a while now (mainly to coil the kids homeschool workbooks) so I used that to bind the pages together. I also trimmed the corners off with a punch I’ve never used before! Yay! That gave it a nice finished look that I love.
It is very rough at this point, but I do plan to put something fun on the cover and add color to all the pages once I decide if I’m going to do a theme or keep things simple. Almost too many decisions to make.
First in is an “Index.” Smidget pointed out this should be called the table of contents because and index goes in the back of a book. Point taken kid, but this is how the BuJo (short for Bullet Journal) folks do it.
Next is what they call a “Future Log” a.k.a. the year in one glance. Its a place to jot down notes for the year ahead.
This is one of my favorite pages. I’m so excited to fill up this “bookshelf” with the books I read this year! It decorated so far with an aloe plant (the only plant I’ve kept alive for any length of time), coffee cup, and a “B” bookend. I will probably need that last shelf since I read a ton of books to review but I may need to fill it with a bunch or only just a few so I’m leaving it blank. No title yet as I’m still undecided on a proper one. “Books I’ve Read” just sounds blah….
I’ve also started some of the other pages listed in the Index but they aren’t ready to go public just yet. I will be posting more layouts and spreads as I work on them though so be sure to check back. Any ideas for homeschool pages I could add??
If you’re interested in starting a bullet journal search #bulletjournal on Instagram, YouTube or Pinterest and you’ll have plenty of ideas. There’s also some great Facebook groups for BuJo too 🙂
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