My Favorite Paper Planner

Last year I discovered the Golden Coil planner after a lot of you recommended it as the “best planner ever” and loved it so much that featured it in my Daily Faves post, my Gift Guide for Her and ordered another one for 2021! I am extremely picky when it comes to paper planners and use mine to organize everything from to do lists to party planning to scheduling blog content and more. The only thing that I don’t use my planner for is meal planning and work — I like to keep those things organized separately.

Since I have so many requirements, I am willing to splurge a bit for thick, bleed resistant pages and to fully customize the order, theme and layout of the pages. This year I added TWO monthly calendars to my planner too — one for our family (appointments, school stuff, vacations, etc.) and a separate one for my blog (deadlines, content planning, to do lists, notes, etc.). I am unbelievably excited to organize these two parts of my life separately in my 2021 planner. 

If it’s your first time customizing your planner, it can be a little overwhelming. After using my 2020 calendar all year, I knew exactly how I wanted customize my 2021 planner — which is actually completely different this time since there are new options available! I’ve had some requests to share how I laid mine out but recommend checking out ALL the features on Golden Coil’s website because there are lots of really cool pages for homeschooling, fitness/health, social media, budgeting, meal planning and more!

Cover

The toughest choice again this year for me was picking the color of the linen color!! I loved my color from last year but decided to change it up with color Harbour this time after seeing my sister’s planner in person. It is even more gorgeous in person.

Layout

You can choose from a variety of daily, weekly and monthly layouts. This year I went with the weekly double-page in the boxes layout. I like to make a to-do list every day so this layout is perfect for that so I can see my entire week of to-dos.

Pages

There are tons and tons of pages you can add in to your planner. This is where it gets really fun. Here are a few of the categories you can choose from:

• CALENDARING (at-a-glance monthly & yearly pages, undated calendar, addresses): This year I wanted two separate monthly calendars (one for family/personal and one for the blog), so this is where I added 12 undated monthly pages to my planner to get that second calendar. 
• FOOD (groceries + meals, fitness + health, recipes, kitchen conversions): Last year I included meal planning pages but skipped those this year as I like to keep a meal planning pad + grocery list on the fridge so the entire family can see it and add things.
• HEALTH (wellness, mood, reflections, measurements, baby charts)
• PROJECTS (brain dump, meeting notes, social media, story boards, finances): I am really excited about the social media pages I added in for 2021 to organize my blog post ideas!!!
• LIFESTYLE (goals, budgets, expenses, home care, travel, event planning, homework, school, lesson planning, bucket lists, reading charts, online orders, passwords, holiday gifting): SO MANY good pages in this section. We plan lots of gatherings in our home so I definitely added a handful of events pages and holiday gifting pages!
• STANDARD (to do, spreadsheets, dot pages, grid pages, lined, blank): This is where you can add blank pages for anything else you may need. I added a few lined pages after each month that I love to use for Community Group lesson planning.

Add-Ons

This is where you can add in quotes or challenges to your pages. You can choose from a variety of themes like productivity, motivational, pop culture, scripture, literary, self-care challenges and more. I went with inspirational/motivational quotes this year!

And that’s a full, detailed review of my Golden Coil planner! Tag my in your pictures if you order one! I would love to see YOUR planner!!!