I <3 My Planner

Last year I made a post gushing about how much I liked my little planner.

It was a nice little planner, but it had one major drawback—the calendar. I use the two-page-per-week format, so I can see a whole week at a time. However, these calendars are designed for 9-to-5 weekday people. The calendar weekdays start at eight, end at six. The weekends are squeezed in as an afterthought.

I’m not a 9-to-5 weekday person. A lot of what I need to keep track of happens in the evenings and on weekends. I found the perfect format on Day-Timer’s web site, advertised as “for real estate agents.” I guess they, too, have to keep track of things that happen on evenings and weekends. I love this format. The days start at seven and end at nine, and the weekends get just as much space as the weekdays. It’s perfect.

But they don’t make it for my planner size.

Apparently all real estate agents use the Desktop size, which is 5.5″ x 8.5″. My beloved little planner is a Portable, which is 3.75″ x 6.75″.

I liked the format so much I got a Desktop-sized planner. I moved all my info onto desktop-size pages. I started using it in January. I really do like the format.

But I don’t like the size. It’s heavy to carry around, it doesn’t fit easily into my purse, and it’s awkward to try and hold it in one hand while looking over my schedule. What I really wanted was the real estate format, for the portable planner.

So dammit, I made one. I spent the last few days working in a draw program and put that format into two PDF files (front and back pages) that can be printed out and trimmed to fit a portable planner. Last night I moved all my info back to the portable size pages. Now I have my little planner again.

I’m way too excited about being reunited with my planner. I dance around the living room with my planner while “Shiny Happy People” plays in the background. I gleefully page through my little planner, congratulating myself on my custom-made calendar.

I show it to everyone. As with my cross-stitch and other needlecraft, they try to feign interest because they see how excited I am about it.

And somewhere, somewhere out there is another person who has been wanting this format for a portable-sized planner. I should put my PDF files up on my blog for them to download, just so my efforts aren’t solely for my benefit.

Now I’m going to go dance around with my planner some more.

Edit: I did put them up for download. Also put them up on diyplanner.com. So to that one other person in the world who’s been looking for planner pages like this, here they are.