Calendar Planning in the Midori: Current and 2014

Hi everyone!

Since I started using the Midori, I've been revelling in the joy of having a lot of writing room.  Especially in the Diary.  I have pretty tiny handwriting so it wasn't really a problem, but having all that space is a nice bonus.  I prefer the Week+Notes format but had to resort to WO2P in the Filofax for a number of reasons.

In the Midori, I handmade the Week+Notes format in the lined notebook it came with.  I now have room for lots of lots of to-dos.

Hand-drawn lines and dates, stamped days of the week, and Muji stamp for a to-do list.

This is the post that led to this diary journey.

I started using the Muji stamp in October 2012 and wrote about it in this post.  I'm happy to say I've kept it up for a year.  I used the stamp in both the Dodopad when I was in that, and the WO2P.  I loved the visuals in the Dodopad.  However, it had to take a bit of effort to squeeze in everything I wanted into the daily grids.

In the Dodopad

The same week in the Filofax Cotton Cream WO2P

Below is a snapshot of a week in the Midori.  As you can see, I can write loads of things, with room to spare.

Days of the week on the left, Notes page on the right.

I started using icons to categorize tasks, as you can see in the next photo, using a template.  (More about this below.)

For 2014, I decided to get the same diary format.  I've been having fun setting it up in preparation for next year. Early, I know, but I wanted it ready to go when it was time, and frankly, I can't wait to start using it!  (:

I decorated the front and back covers with stickers and embossed the two halves of the year on the cover (Jan-Jun, Jul-Dec).

I stuck month tabs to make it easy to find the beginning of each month.











And my favorite customization is the addition of icons to better categorize tasks, appointments and events.

I'll test out a few different formats to check out what works best for me.

Here's how I'll use it:

I assigned a space on the blank page facing the calendar days for Things To Do (safety pin icon) and Calls to Make (phone/cell phone icon).  The man/woman icons are for my family's schedule (work, play, others).

On the calendar pages, I'll use icons to categorize tasks and use them as 'invisible' columns.

I got the icon template from pencils.jp.  Incidentally, it's the same place I get my Midori and inserts/refills. They have the best prices on the web for the Midori notebooks, refills and accessories.

I've seen similar templates like these such as the one Tracy got.  They're available on Etsy. They were a bigger size so when I found this credit card-sized template, I grabbed it.

Lastly, I don't really decorate my pages but I'll add the occasional sticker or stamp just to give the pages a little bit of interest.  Sometimes they're themed, more often than not, they're not.  And now, because I have all this room, I may start to really decorate, we'll see.

Diary planning is a little less of a chore now because my pages are neat and pretty.

I hope this post made sense!  I found it a little hard to accurately describe what I did and I hope the photos helped.

Thanks for visiting!