2023 Planner Line Up & How I’m Using Them
Ah, my favourite time of the year; planner set up time.
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Getting all my planners set up for the new year is often a Christmas activity for me. I’ll usually do a bit of prep beforehand, ordering any supplies that I need or cutting any of my stickers that I know I’ll use. I’ll also do my ‘planning my planners‘ activity, so I know exactly how I’m setting everything up. This leaves me just to take a few hours to sit down and start putting pen (and stickers) to paper.
This year I’ll be using four planners to keep me on track, with just one change from last year.
The Hobonichi Weeks, in the special edition Moomin design*.
The Hobonichi Cousin (after skipping it last year in favour of trialling the Take A Note).
Yellow Filofax Finsbury* in Personal size.
Travelers Company TN* in Passport size.
I’ll likely do a more detailed set up post on each of these planners, but today I just wanted to give you an overview of the full planner line up for the year, and the primary uses for each of them.
Hobonichi Weeks
The Hobonichi Weeks is my daily planner. It lives on my desk and holds all of my plans and tasks.
In addition, it serves as a place to track fitness and finances. This spread hasn’t been started yet, but I also pop post-it notes in when I’m setting up, so I know exactly how I’m using spreads once the time comes.
This will be my sixth year in my Weeks, and it’s definitely only in the past year that I’ve really found my way with this planner. For years, I thought it was too small to be functional for me. But I’ve now got my weeklies set up in such a way that I don’t feel restricted by space any more.
I’ll share a bit on my layouts and how I’m using the pages in the full Weeks set up post.
Hobonichi Cousin
I really missed this last year. As much as I enjoyed using the Take A Note planner, I missed the daily pages of the Cousin.
I love the daily pages because I love to use this planner for all my long term planning.
The daily pages give me the perfect amount of space for all my notes and collections that I need throughout the year.
I’d pick this over a day free version because I also like the fact that these ‘notes’ pages are dated. Meaning I can then slot in some journaling every so often when we have fun days out or holidays. The yearly overview pages are also then perfect for creating an easy index.
In previous years I’ve used my weekly pages in this for full planning, but as I’ve found peace with the Weeks, I’ll be using the weekly pages for fun ‘sticker planning’. I don’t use many stickers in my Weeks and I have quite a collection to use, so this should be a nice way to use them up.
Yellow Personal Filofax Finsbury
The planner looks different to the last couple of years (it was a Malden), but the insides are still the same.
This isn’t my first yellow Finsbury. I purchased a pocket one a few years ago and set it up as a purse. As much as I loved it, I didn’t get on with the size. This time around, it’s perfect for me. This planner holds any important information that lasts longer than a year. Birthdays and other important dates, financial info, addresses, things like that.
It’s a very simple set up, but it works for me. If you’d like to get a better idea of how I use it, you can take a look at an older set up post here.
Passport TN
I’ve tried a couple of times to get into Travelers Notebooks. I remember falling in love with the limited edition blue one in a regular size a few years ago now.
As beautiful as it was, I didn’t like how easily stuffed it looked. I tried again with another from The Nomad Factory a couple of years later.
While this held inserts better, I just couldn’t get on with the fact that the inserts didn’t lay flat. So I knew I could never use one for regular daily planning.
However, following Linsdey Scribbles on Insta and YT I couldn’t help but fall in love with the passport size.
This was originally intended mainly for holidays. I didn’t have somewhere to hold travel documents and any mementoes I picked up whilst away. Having somewhere to jot down travel info and any memory keeping was a bonus also.
I actually ended up setting this up as a wallet instead. It’ll still come on holidays and serve those purposes above, but it now has a day to day use.
Since Covid I hadn’t had an EDC. So if I needed to make plans whilst out, I had to try and remember when I was busy. Now I don’t have to. I also now have a place for cards, and vouchers and anything else I may need to carry while I’m out.
I’ll be doing more in depth set up posts in the coming weeks on all these planners
Except the personal, as that set up hasn’t changed.
If there’s anything in particular you’d like to know about how I’m using these planners, please drop them in the comments, and I’ll be sure to include them in the next posts.