If you would have asked me at the beginning of my homeschool journey if I would ever be the “planner” type of parent, my answer would have been an emphatic “NO!”
I had my second child, my oldest son, 10 days before my firstborn turned 3. This started an interesting chapter for us. I was finally a stay at home mom(something I’d been wanting all along), and my daughter was finally old enough to sign up for different activities. I jumped at the chance to sign her up for dance, gymnastics, and AWANA. Some weeks, we’d go. Some weeks, we wouldn’t. Why? Because I’d forget what day it was, or schedule something on the same evening she had another activity. After missing a couple weeks in a row, her dance teacher asked if she’d been sick. I hadn’t necessarily realized we’d skipped 3 weeks in a row. Her first time back and it was parent observation week, which we didn’t know about. So, not only did she not know the dance, but I had made the cardinal mistake of bringing my infant son along. No siblings were allowed for any reason. My daughter was embarrassed and upset. I berated myself all the way home. The next day I went out and bought a wall calendar. Keep in mind, this is before “planners” were even a thing! I wrote down all the activities she was in, along with the dates payments were due for these activities, and any “special events” for any of these activities. I then went through and filled in family/friend birthdays. Little did I know then, that it was the beginning of a new era……
I continued to buy wall calendars each year that I used to write EVERYTHING on. This was a fun phase! I kept it hanging on a main wall in our home, and we’d “X” off each day, so we could always see what was coming up. It’s how my daughter learned her days of the week.
After a while, we outgrew these wall calendars. By the time I had my third child, it was really full. When it was time to start adding in his appointments, they wouldn’t fit. So I went out and bought a different kind of calendar. It was a weekly planning calendar. I started filling it out and kept it in my purse, so I could always add to it. I would also write down any fun, upcoming events that I wanted us to attend. It was revolutionary for me. It was the only part of my life, with 3 kids under 5, that had any semblance of order to it. This era continued for quite a while. Then, after I started my in-home daycare, I decided I needed a slightly bigger calendar, and I bought one about the size of a notebook that still had the weekly planning pages. This was perfect and I stuck with it up until this year.
During 2017, I started hearing people talk about planners and bullet journals. I just lurked in the shadows listening to conversations and stalking Facebook group sites. It was quite mesmerizing. I was quite taken aback by how in depth people go into these. Some were really impressive. Then in December, I headed to Hobby Lobby(with my 40% off coupon, just in case), to browse and page through planners. I must have gone up and down that aisle for hours. There were stickers, and extra pages, and pens, and and and…..so many extras! It was overwhelming and much more expensive than I thought it’d be. I went home trying to rationalize the cost. I decided it would be my Christmas gift to myself. I decided that I’d just buy the planner and a few stickers to start with(that just happened to be 50% off). I spent quite a bit of time over Christmas break, working on it. Filling it in. It was so much fun, I was addicted. All the different colored pens and quotes! I decided that I’d use the 40% off coupon once a month, if I really wanted to add to it, but I was happy with how I’d started. I was able to split the days into categories so I could easily see daycare activities, homeschool activities, and evening commitments. I even had room to add reminders. My first “extra” that I purchased was the meal planning pages. I must admit, I didn’t use them nearly as often as I had intended to, but I’m still glad I bought them. In the back, there were all these pages for extra things. I had a page with my pets birthdays and vaccination dates. One with my own book log. A cleaning schedule…I could go on and on….there were so many fun pages!
I had the intention of keeping homeschool lesson plans in here too. I was going to spend the second week of Christmas break planning out the rest of our school year and filling in those assignments. However, on January 2, my mom passed away, extremely unexpectedly. This threw any plans that I had and was planning to make into a whirlwind. It also made me stop and think about just how much of a “planner” I wanted to be. I liked having commitments written down as reminders, but I also like the flexibility to add to/take away from each day. I put any planning on hold, and it’s pretty much stayed that way all year. Just when I was starting to flit back in to reality, my youngest brother, equally shockingly, passed away. Again I was on pause. It’s been a year of adjustments for us. I’m grateful I had my planner because it was what kept our family functioning, while I, more often than not, didn’t want to deal with anything. I quit writing stuff down in my planner, found no joy in planning anything, yet every time I’d look at it, I’d see more and more written into it. The kids had started filling it with everything we needed to do, and some very inspirational quotes too! Although it’s just a planner, it has held my family together and kept us going throughout this whole year. It’s been quite humbling really.
Since the end of the year seems to be upon us, I was
Have you succumbed yet to the pressure of having a PLANNER?
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Awesome ideas! Thanks for sharing!
So sorry for your losses, maybe I should purchase one too coz I keep forgetting stuff
Thank you!
They really do help! I cannot imagine my life without one.