Today’s lets talk about something I used to post about non-stop: Planners! While I still love and appreciate a good paper planner, I don’t go quite as hard on the stickers anymore. Having a perfectly balanced spread became very overwhelming and didn’t feel fun anymore so I went back to basics. I still use stickers in my monthly spread, but my weekly view is about pure utility.
This year I took a detour from the traditional Erin Condren Life Planner and went with the new Hardbound Life Planner with the vertical layout in the 8×10 size. It comes in neutral and colorful, but you can clearly see from the photo above I went with the colorful one. This planner still has the vertical layout boxes with headers, but they are a bit larger than the traditional coil-bound ECLP boxes so traditionally sized stickers are too small for these boxes. If you have a large hoard of sticker kits you want to use this may not be the planner for you, but if you use mostly icon stickers this will still work just fine.
My favorite design feature of the hardbound planner is that the cover personalization is a beautiful gold metallic. I love seeing my new name on the cover everyday! The edges of the pages are all finished in a gold foil metallic as well so when the book is closed the pages give a glamorous gold shine.
My least favorite feature to this planner is the cover itself. The hardbound planners come in just one design, the one pictures above in either a colorful finish or a black in white finish. I personally am not a huge fan of the weird scratchy line design. I’m not sure who thought this was a great design but its a miss for me. I can appreciate simplicity but this just feels messy and, quite frankly, a little boring. I understand the companies perspective in only offering one design for the hardbound planner since its all one piece and cannot be swapped out. Stocking too many design options can get pricy and complicated. But from my perspective, the customer perspective, the lack of cover design options is the biggest draw-back of going with the hardbound.
Having used the planner for a few weeks now I’m very pleased with it. It’s so much slimmer and more compact than the coil bound planner so its easier to slide in and out of my purse, which was the biggest draw for me purchasing it. The paper is thick and luxurious (if paper can be). I’m using the 2019 year on two pages to track PTO and important dates for the year. I would be happy to share that if anyone wants to see it, though its nothing fancy. I’m using the January notes page to brainstorm video and blog post ideas. On my monthly view, which is the only place I use stickers, I mark all my bills, important household reminders, birthdays, and events. This is my favorite page to look at because I feel like the stickers aren’t purely decorative, but actually serve a useful, at-a-glance purpose. Once again, I would be happy to share that as well if anyone is interested. And, lastly, on my weekly pages I use the top row of boxes to track my work meetings and the other two boxes just have daily to do lists.
In the coming years I would be interested to see if Erin Condren ends up putting out a scaled down version of this hardbound planner. I know they offer a smaller hardbound in the horizontal layout, but a smaller version of the vertical would be awesome. I don’t mind the size of this one, but a slightly smaller one would fit into more of my purses. I feel like its something we will end up seeing in the next year or two.
I would love to know what planner yall are using this year so let me know in the comments below!
