Daybook 2011/12 is Done!

Call me Dr. Frankenstein if you will but in my humbly biased opinion I've birthed a beauty! I grabbed a few print-outs here and there, spent more than I wanted to on stationary, and a slim yet substantial blue book now waits to absorb the overflow of my cranium.

I decided that - as much as I love me some tidy spiral binding - the binder idea is more sensible until I figure out what I use and want. I went with an A5 size for portability, but it did increase the cost of the pre-made inserts as that's a less-common format. (Well after the fact I discovered free printable calendar pages here. How can I spend so much time on the internet and not think to look this stuff up before cracking out the cash?) I scaled down the printables I'd swiped from Life Your Way and drafted a few of my own, and now I think I've covered as many bases as I can forsee:

Day By 5s visual for the schedule page

• Calendar, including holidays in any country in which I have family
• address book. Likely to be unused as I prefer Outlook, but handy in a pinch
• loose leaf lined note paper. I use this a lot*
• daily/weekly/monthly schedules including large blocks of unassigned time and regular plant watering. Blog writing is scheduled for Wednesdays and Sundays, but time will tell if that translates to twice-weekly posts or not. (Blogger's new pre-scheduled publishing function is making my month)
• Daily 5s. I got this idea from Life As Mom and adapted it for my needs
• sturdy clear pockets for temporary holding of random bits I may collect, and one for business cards from our doctor, babysitter and the like. The Dirty Dozen and safe fish lists (US version) will also live here. Here's a fun interactive database of edible fish with filters for sustainability and health.
• a weigh-in and measurement table to keep me focussed and on the primal wagon
• a borrow & lend table to keep track of the stuff and detritus that floats in and out of my house and the back of my brain
• quotes, reminders, rules for myself, cheat sheets. These are laminated

There are a few other templates hanging out in my planning folder, but I'd say I've got more than enough to start with for now!

I've made myself a customised, functional wonderbook. Am I satisfied? Oh no, now I've decided that I need to sew it a cover. No, I'm not worried that it will get cold. I want an elastic that holds it shut, and can forsee being able to slip the back cover of my current *spiral-bound notebook-of-all-uses into the binder cover. That would free up the blank paper section for one of those other 8 categories. This is enticing, since I only have 5 dividers. With a sewn-in pen loop, it's essentially a portable desk.

Which is handy, since I don't have a desk.

That's right, I do all this amazing search/research and scribing in various stretched-out positions around my livingroom soft furniture. Don't get jealous, I've got back and pelvic problems from it so I'm knee-deep in plans for a standing desk. But that's another post.

With the daybook in order and scheduled activities gearing up for the fall, I'm eager to see if this is a system I will USE, and if it will reduce the static buzzing in my head from the encroaching chaos in my home. To help that along I followed the linky train from Life As Mom to an article on staging your home for living, and am convinced. Why do we live here all the time but only perk it up for visits or really spruce it up for visitors or potential buyers? Aren't we worth the good china?

So over the next while I'll be going room to room, using a modified version of the D-Day method to get our few things even fewer and much less askew. Of course I would only do that during those designated blocks of unscheduled time. Because I'm not inclined to get obsessive about a project. Not. at. all.

Readers, what's firing your engines these days? What do you think of me using a twice-weekly posting schedule to alternate food and non-food posts?