DIY: 2016 Planner On A Budget

#PlannerSeries #Planner2016 #PlannerPh

I love to jot down notes and stuff ever since elementary days and had been using spiral notebooks. But when I started working ten years ago, I switched to planners, those generic ones available in National Books Store until last year. 

I need a planner to keep my life organized, track things down, combine all my note taking and planning into one system. Its quite hard not having a planner because I blog, work full time as Virtual Assistant and I'm a full-time mom so a planner is really handy to schedule all my tasks and effectively perform them all. Sometimes I tend to forget deadlines, important payments, etc because my brain clog at times for I perform endless tasks a day. If that happens, I just look at my planner to get back to track.

This year, I never plan to buy new planner, instead I thought to just create one. I am saving up for a lot of things so I crossed out buying a new planner to my list. My hubby offered to buy me one but I refused. 

I decided to start a Planner Series to show how I create my own customized planner on a very limited budget. It means it is mostly DIY from the pages, inserts and accessories.
I just bought a binder from my local bookstore and a hundred leaves of sterling notebook refill. Then, I just went ahead and customize using my puncher, a pair of scissor, washi tapes and colored papers.

The size is 6'' x 8 1/4''.  It comes with five dividers.

WEEKLY TAB

 I feel the space is good enough for my stuff. It got me enough room for my daily writing activities.

Here is a glance of my spread for the week! Most part is blurred, you know why :)

I also added this WEEKLY CHECKLIST page where I can have a view at a glance all important things I need to perform on a daily basis. After each week, I just put on a new page all the weekly checklist for the month so I have an overview of things I performed at a glance for each month.

BLOGS TAB

I made a blog tab designed with washi tapes and colored pens. On the first page, I write down all my blog post ideas for the month. At the second page, I schedule each blog post and divide into four weeks. I put a check box where I can mark once I published the blog post. I will just cross out unpublished blog post and schedule it the next week. I will see if this system will work then I will stick to it. Otherwise I will try another option.

BILLS TAB
This is where my finance is managed. I also made a plastic envelope from an unused plastic folder. I punch holes on the plastic envelope and insert in my binder, this is usable for the receipts and bills. Then, I just jot down my monthly expenses and bills. I just made it simple showing due dates, date paid, bill amount, and notes.

I quite don’t like the binder cover because its too juvenile for my taste. The binder came in with a plastic cover so I just slipped in this pink gift wrapper.

I am still working on some stuff in this planner so there might be changes and will soon post it. Lets see if this system can keep up and will not fall apart as soon as my stress level increase :). But for now, I am happy enough with my Planner on a budget because I can customize it the way I want and need. I can tweak and adjust how much space I need for my daily activities. I will soon publish posts on how I made DIY inserts and accessories for my planner, too!

I spent Php 145.00 / $3.60 to set up this planner, the washi tapes are from my previous DIY projects last year.

Here are other planner related posts you might want to check out: Planner Love