Planning to Organize

Wednesday--it's time to organize just one thing in my life to make it a little less cluttered.  Today, I'm focusing on my planner.  Every year, I buy the same kind of planner from Wal-Mart.  Same brand, just a different pattern every year:

Studio C, by Carolina Pad.  It's the size of a standard school notebook with spaces big enough to write all your things in day-by-day.  I hate monthly calendars.  I can't fit all my stuff into a tiny box! 
My day job is working as a legislative assistant for my dad, who serves as a Kentucky State Senator.  When I took the job, one of the requirements is to keep up with his schedule.  Which can get hectic, especially this time of year.  Parades every weekend, fundraisers, picnics, etc.  Needless to say, "my" calendar has filled up with my dad's appointments.  In the beginning, I tried keeping our things separate by highlighting things in a different color.  Dad's stuff was green, my stuff was pink, blogging stuff was blue.  And it worked.....for a little while.  Until the green began to take over the days. 

See the green?  That's dad's stuff.  Just dad's stuff.  And it always grows.  It starts as one or two things and ends up being several things a day.  It just gets confusing for me.  I'm the type that writes EVERYTHING down.  If I need to put chicken in the fridge to thaw out for tomorrow's dinner, it needs to be written down on a to-do list, or I'll forget it.  Make fun of me, if you will, but dad's calendar wasn't leaving enough room for my obsessive step-by-step calendar for everyday.  Enter the Dollar General store.  Enter a "student" planner for $2.

I can have all of my things in here....and color-coded.  Red is that night's dinner menu.  Dark blue is to-do things (laundry, put ground beef out to thaw, take Minnie Mouse doll back for return).  Green is appointments and events.  Light blue is blogging ideas.  This works.  I can have all of my stuff in one place and all dad's in another.  I'm not searching through the green highlights to see what I need to do that day.  I've organized one thing in my life today and it feels pretty darn good (and looks pretty good too).