In Search of an Ideal Planner, Part II

When I decided to not make a planner this year, I started looking for alternatives that met the criteria I set for myself, inspired by one that Etsy gave out to its sellers years ago, as I related in my planners part one post, here.

That is, I wanted a planner that is fairly small, with a simple unfussy format, and that's flexible in how you can use it, because I use it more as a log or record book than for planning. I want it to lay flat when opened so it's easy to write in or even keep open on your desk if you want to do that. 

Some of the ones that meet that criteria are undated, which, on the one hand, is nice because you could start it any time, and it certainly makes sense for the seller, because they never become obsolete! But it's not as useful to you and me because you need to consult a calendar to fill in the dates and note whichever holidays are relevant to you. 

In fact, when it occurred to me that if you have to fill in the calendar part of a planner yourself, you could use any notebook that is the size and quality you like, if you just had a printable version of a current calendar, such as the 2025 Useful Calendar, to paste or tape into it. So I made the medium size version of the desk calendar into a printable PDF for anyone who wants to do that.

Here's my very short list of planners you might want to consider, if you're still looking for a planner.

Field Notes

The undated 56-week planner by Field Notes is the one I bought for my husband, who will use it as a kind of log book.  

It has a sturdy chipboard cover, a spiral binding, and a nice clean design. It's the smallest of all those I found, at  4.75" x 7.5".  It's also very economical at $16.95.

It has only weekly spreads, no full month pages like most other planners. That seems like a drawback if you're looking ahead, but not a problem for a log book or diary.

Nuts and Bolts Paper Co.

I also ordered another one that's undated (on the inside) from a shop called Nuts and Bolts Paper Co., which is really about baby books and other mom stuff, but I was intrigued by the look of their planner, so I ordered one. The cover color choices were just mint or pink, and being more of an earth-tone kind of person, I wasn't crazy about either, but I ordered pink. The base price is $12; with the addition of pockets it came to $18.

It has the year on the front, as you can see, and a year-in-a-glance for the current and next year just inside (but without any holidays), and then the individual months and weeks, which are blank for you to fill in. You can also personalize it with a title or your name. Because I didn't know if or for what I would actually use it, I titled it "Random Miscellany." 

It's about 6" x 8", which is a little bigger than my ideal. The pages are a nice heavy text weight (70lb), and the back cover is a sturdy chipboard, plus the spiral binding is just big enough that it should accommodate a bit of added content (aka scrapbooking/mixed media/visual journaling).

You have several options with this one, such as choosing a month/week format (which I did) or a daily layout, whether to add an insert with pockets at the back (I chose that too), and some other choices. 

 

Honestly, I think I went for it because of the pockets and the attractive layout of the pages, which include various boxes with blank headings and others that could be renamed.  I may use it as a visual journal.

And maybe collage a little on the cover at some point.

Minnesota Weatherguide Environment Calendar 

This is the one I actually keep coming back to — the "engagement" version, in book form.

I love all the Minnesota nature photographs — one for each week — and all the weather and phenology information it contains. I use it to record household events, mostly, such as when the heat went out and when it was fixed, or when we had the plumbing upgraded, or that problem with ants in the kitchen and how we finally solved it. It has pages at the back for notes, which I use as an index, and other pages that I use like a scrapbook, to save funeral booklets and obits or other mementos. (I just tape or paste them on top of whatever content is printed there.)

Mementos pasted into the back of my 2023 Weatherguide calendar

 

An index in the back of my 2023 Weatherguide calendar.

Other planners that might work for you

I didn't buy any more planners to review, because, you know, I can only buy so many! But here are a couple more that looked appealing. Maybe one of them is just what you were looking for.

Favorite Story

This Etsy shop has a very nice basic planner, with natural brown chipboard covers, spiral binding, and a straightforward layout that doesn't add fussy trendy things like goal trackers and such. It's about 6" x 8", has major holidays noted on the month spreads, and  weekly pages that follow. There are two pockets as a folded insert (at the front), and a set of sticker tabs to apply yourself. The 178 pages includes 14 pages for notes. 

Frankly, this comes the closest to what I was looking for, other than being a little larger than I'd want, but I discovered it after I had bought the foregoing, and I wasn't going to buy any more of them! 

Fringe Studio

This company has several attractive planners, two of which are dated and the others undated. The covers feature lovely artwork and they appear to be well constructed, although I did not examine any of them "in person," so that's just a general impression. They come in a wide variety of types, covers, and sizes, with prices ranging from $15 to $40. Worth browsing through, anyway, even if only to look at all the cover designs.

... or there's always the DIY spreadsheet ... 

Finally, a confession: For actual planning, like to-do lists and weekly schedules and such, I use a spreadsheet on my computer. I note the weather forecast at the top because it affects whether I plan to go someplace by bicycle or stay home or drive somewhere, and since the weather is constantly changing, so are my plans. My to-do lists are often unrealistic, so I regularly copy-and-paste items to another day. I can color code the rows and boxes and then change them frequently, and I have a row or two across the bottom for vague sometime-in-the-future tasks that I don't want to completely forget about. 

Other than those future-task rows, all the entries are constantly changing and ephemeral, so if I want to note that I completed a given task, I write it down somewhere else, like in a planner/log book!

I made my weekly planner with the Numbers application that comes with Apple devices, which I can then access on my computer or iPad. But I'm sure you could do something like this in any spreadsheet program. (Another confession: the "House cleaning" row is purely aspirational. I rarely do any of the things.) 

Here's what it looks like as of today (in two screen shots): 

Good luck and happy planning in the new year!

In Search of an Ideal Planner, Part I

Years ago when Etsy was a community of makers and the admin staff was encouraged to foster friendly relations with them, they would host little in-person gatherings in the cities and towns where employees travelled to visit family at the end of the year. They called these meetups Home for the Holidays, and Etsy shop keepers could register to attend if there was one in your locale. 

The one I remember was in December 2012, and I can recall the year because they gave out nifty little planner notebooks to all who attended.

I thought it was the neatest thing. I wrote my shop name on the front and used it for all kinds of notes, plans, stats, and analysis pertaining to my Etsy shop for a few years. I entered sales and views numbers, and tracked how my business was growing year over year on the platform. Looking back on it now, 12 years and immense growth and countless administrative changes at Etsy later (including new owners and becoming a publicly traded business), I am reminded of how different the experience of being an Etsy maker-seller is now, and how much my sales have declined since then. 

But I just wanted to say that I never got another planner from them, which is why I kept using it for 3 or more years. In fact, I've not seen another planner quite like it anywhere and that's what led me to start tinkering with making my own.

What I liked about it was its compact size (5"w x 6.5"h), spiral binding, and simple, flexible design. Each month opened on a two-page spread with holidays noted, followed by weekly pages that had the days on one side and a facing page that was finely gridded, so you could use it however you wanted. That's why I could keep notes and stats and sometimes sketch product design ideas for a few years.

As a very small-time operator and completely hands-on maker, I set out to design a planner that I could print at home and make myself from start to finish. That meant the size had to work with letter-size paper, to avoid excessive trimming and waste, so I made the pages 4.25"w x 5.5"h to print four on each side of a sheet on my Canon laser printer, which will print two-sided automatically. 

At first I would make only one, beginning in 2015. I was just focused on the logistics of making it and figuring what kind of hand-sewn binding I wanted to use. I experimented and played around with them for a few years, always just making a test document for myself. 

When I finally made a few to sell, in 2019 (for 2020) I used a through-the-spine criss-cross type of binding, which was a little complicated to execute, but allowed the book to open fully and lay flat for ease of use. It was a slim volume and probably contained too much information and not enough space for writing. My records indicate that I sold three of them.

(It was the Year of the Rat, hence the rodent theme.)

By the most recent version, for 2024 (Year of the Dragon), I had pared down the extra information and added more pages for user notes, increased the page count to 128, and assembled it with the same criss-cross binding through the spine, but with more signatures, which was a bit fussy to execute.

Well, earlier this year (2024), I learned of a printer near me, Smart Set, that was popular with a few artists I knew, employed eco-friendly practices (recycled papers, plant-based toner), is a certified B corporation and a union shop. I had been reluctant to consider using an outside printer, but these guys ticked all the boxes for me. 

Still, one of the reasons for my hesitation is that I am not a pro graphic designer and I was pretty sure that the way I set up my documents to print at home would not translate well to a print shop. The calendar itself, in two formats, required only moderate changes in how I set up the documents, and they printed beautifully. 

But the planner was more complicated: It would take quite a bit of time for me to create the document on my computer, which needed to be very different from how I had done it before, and it would cost quite a bit more than printing the calendars. I checked my previous year's sales records — about a dozen of them sold, some only after they were discounted — and I realized I just couldn't do it. 

Frankly, it was a relief to just pull the plug on that. But my husband and a handful of others had really liked my little planner, and I still wanted something small and flexible for my own use. So I began looking for a planner that met my criteria, and while I did find something that will serve for 2025, the search has renewed my urge to design my own. Now that I have a good idea of what's involved, including the cost, I just might have another go at it for 2026.

In the meantime, here's what I found and recommend in Planners Part II.