2021 Home Planner

My Erin Condren order finally arrived today!

I have been following the tracking like a hawk & it's finally here! It may seem a little overkill, especially since one of my 2021 planners isn't pictured but I promise it will all make sense soon. Just keep reading...

On the left is the Petite Planner & Folio System. I enjoy journaling but have been in a slump lately so I decided to invest in this product. It is compiled of 4 separate journals. With this product, you can basically build it to fit your needs. I chose self-care, gratitude, goal setting & travel. For the cover, I went with the Champagne vegan leather.

On the right is my weekly life planner. This is the best selling item offered on the site & the reason I came running back to Erin Condren after stepping away last year! I highly recommend this planner and I can go into more detail on these two items in a later post if you'd like me to. Just let me know on Instagram or by emailing me at erikka.alwayswillow@gmail.com.

Not pictured is my weekly life planner for work.

Front & center is our first home planner and I am over the moon!

A few of you had asked how we plan to use this &, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure. I have an idea which is what I will layout for the rest of this post, but it is all subject to change. I may do a follow-up post in March if you are interested.

As you can tell, I went with a rainbow theme this year. As I've already mentioned, I've been in a slump and we all know how well 2020 has been. I needed some color to cheer me up.

This is what my order looked like:

Kaleidoscope Colorful Metallic Monthly Planner

COLOR OPTIONS Metallic Rose Gold CHOOSE YOUR COIL COLOR Rose Gold CHOOSE YOUR PLANNER SIZE 8.5&Quot; X 11&Quot; CHOOSE YOUR INTERIOR DESIGN Layers Colorful CHOOSE YOUR CALENDAR OPTIONS 12 Months: Jan 2021 To Dec 2021 CHOOSE THE NUMBER OF ADDITIONAL NOTE PAGES 80 Lined

The Number 1 reason for this planner:

My husband & I are working through Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps right now. We are super motivated & have major financial goals we want to hit in 2021. This is a spot we can both work through our budget each month & to check in weekly.

Other uses:

• Meal planning

• Birthdays

• Food inventory

• Relationship goals

• Wants & needs lists

• Home maintenance schedule & tracking

QUOTE PAGE

The theme inside her planners this year is called layers. You have a colorful or neutral option. I obviously went with the colorful option because I need all the colors in 2021! (I chose neutral for my work planner. The best of both worlds.)

Love this quote!

YEAR AT A GLANCE

Next, we turn to a year at a glance. I'm not sure how I want to use this yet. In my personal life planner, I am going to use this page to track my mood by highlight the days with a color chart. I personally don't like that it's 2020/2021. I would prefer 2021/2022.

12-BOXES

This is a fun page! There are so many different opportunities you can use this page for! Typically, each of the boxes represents a month & you can set monthly goals.

I am going to use mine to write out a Home Maintenance checklist. Each box will have a list of chores I want to accomplish broken up in time frames. I got this idea from the Start Planner I'm using in 2020. I have tweaked it a little to fit my needs. I will definitely be flipping back to this page often.

1. Sunday

2. Monday

3. Tuesday

4. Wednesday

5. Thursday

6. Friday

7. Saturday

8. Daily

9. Weekly

10. Monthly

11. Quarterly

12. Annually

QUOTE PAGE

From there we get into each month. The monthly tabs open to the monthly spread which makes it super convenient. The page before is a quote & a notes page. I plan to use the notes page to set our budget for that month. I will write down our projected income, projected bills, and break down the percentages for which we will put our income.

For the first few months, there will be a higher percentage going towards savings as we work to complete Baby Step 3-saving 3-6 months of expenses. If you are interested in learning more about budgeting be sure to subscribe & vote on Instagram.

MONTHLY SPREAD

Our monthly spreads will track our paydays & bills that are due. I may keep a running total of what is in our checking account, but I haven't completely decided yet. I also want to use this page to track birthdays. I will probably list them in order in the notes section.

MONTHLY GOAL TRACKER/OVERVIEW

This spread is going to be our goal tracker. We will set monthly goals of how much we want to save that month, or how much extra we want to be able to put towards our mortgage payment. I may keep track of our expenses, but I don't want it to be the same as the page before. So, maybe unexpected or unnecessary expenses? If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

MEAL PLANNING/WEEKLY CHECK-IN

After the monthly goal tracker, there are about 8 lined pages that fall before the next month. I plan to use these as a weekly spread to meal plan our lunch & dinners. One of the biggest budget breakers we have found is buying lunch. We want to get back into the habit of packing our lunches for work the night before & follow through with it for all of 2021. To prep for that goal, we have already started packing our lunches more consistently. I also want to use this as a weekly check-in with our budget. So each week Zach & I will sit down to make sure we are on track to reach our goals & make any adjustments going forward.

I ordered 80+ lined pages that they added in the back of my book after December. We want to track other things like paying off our mortgage and the goals that we set together. It's also a great section for literally just taking notes when we are creating our monthly budget. All in all, I'm excited about this new home planner system & I think we are going to get a lot of use out of it.

Do you keep a home planner for your household? Do you create a budget every month? If so, I want to hear about it. You can connect with me on Instagram @always_willow and subscribe to my blog so you never miss another post.

Always,

Erikka

P.s. I hope you liked my crystals. I was very excited to display them.