2027 Writing Planner

I know it's not even close to 2027 yet, but planner season is starting! Some brands already have their pre-orders up or will have them up shortly and that means decisions must be made.

For 2026, I have two different writer planners going. One is a pocket-sized horizontal and the other is a 7X9 dashboard planner.

I knew I didn't want another dashboard planner because the full week is on one page and instead of going down the left column and then down the right column (which makes total sense to my brain!), this planner goes left, right, left, right, left, right.

While I love stickers, I'm less of a fan of being forced to buy them to correct a layout issue that makes me insane.

The second option I'm using was more tempting for 2027. The small size is nice and it's portable so I can slide it in a pocket if I want or put it in my purse, although I don't generally take my writing planner out of the house.

I also considered a daily duo, which is a planner that has a horizontal and vertical spread for each week of the year. I'm intrigued by that layout, but I'm not sure I need that much planner for what I keep track of.

And the final option on my possibilities list was a planner that has only the weekly pages and next to zero notes pages. It's called the Core planner. For 2026, it was vertical only and vertical is not a layout that my brain can use. I was hopeful, however, that this year it would come in a horizontal option, too.

So where did I end up?

This year, I also bought a monthly 7x9 planner. This is basically just a monthly calendar spread with blank notebook pages behind it. I actually had a plan for it this year, but I didn't write that plan down, and while I waited for a sale and waited for the planner to arrive, I forgot my plan. I still haven't remembered what I thought I was going to do.

My plan for 2027 is to re-date the 2026 monthly planner and create my own weeks pages on the blank notebook pages behind it. The calendar is a Sunday start which I would re-date anyway because I prefer a Monday start. The funny thing is that by changing to a Monday start, the dates all fall correctly for 2027 so all I need to do is re-label the days of the week.

It also gives me the flexibility to create a mini-bullet journal on the blank pages. I started with an elaborate setup for my current writing planner, but it included sections and information that I wasn't keeping up with and wasn't using. That means I only need to create something simple and I think this will be fun.

I hope. 

The Juniper Solution

Every spring I have a landscaping company come out and freshen up my yard. New pine straw, new mulch, some clean up. This year, though, I had a project.

The side of my yard next to the driveway is juniper bushes. This swath of the stuff continues into the backyard, too.

I hate the things.

They end up full of weeds, which can't be sprayed by the company that comes to treat the lawn. That means I have to deal with that. Since there's no chance I'm climbing into the junipers, this means using a hedge clipper to cut the weeds down and walking into my neighbor's yard to reach the top half.

The backyard patch? I can't get the backyard patch at all because the fence prevents me from getting to the back side and even with the tree clippers, I can't reach.

Last year, my neighbors who also had the junipers had theirs removed and replaced with sod and my eyes lit up. I decided then and there to do the same thing and started saving money for the project.

That's what I had done.

(You can see from this picture how ugly the junipers are and how difficult it is to deal with them.)

You know there's a story, right?

First, I had to get the estimate. If it was more than I had budgeted, I wouldn't be able to do it. This ended up being right in line. Yea!

Second, HOA approval is required to make any changes. Have I mentioned how much I hate having an HOA? I wish I had a neighborhood without one. This took three weeks. Sigh.

Third, now I have to wait for the landscaper to schedule me. This took another month. They come the week where it rained every day. That meant they took everything out on Monday, but didn't come back until Thursday to put down the sod. I sweated bullets about getting written up by the HOA for having exposed dirt. I'm still not 100% sure that I won't get a letter, but I'm hopeful.

Fourth, they didn't have enough sod to finish the job and will have to do the patch in the backyard later. Okay, as long as the HOA patrol doesn't see it, I don't care.

Fifth, the readjusted sprinkler is hitting the side of my neighbor's house. Not cool. Landscaper came out to readjust and said they'd have to add another sprinkler head. That's fine. I do not want my neighbors complaining about the sprinkler.

Nothing was quick. Nothing was easy. And as I write this, we're still not 100% complete. 

Categories: Follow Up

One week into using categories in my planner and I like them. A lot.

The problems I mentioned in the previous post are still problems. Like needing to add an item later and not having space for it. I figured out a workaround. I do two columns, so I fill horizontally. That's working.

I've run into a few other issues.

First, I sometimes forget which category something belongs in. Is doing my nails self-care or is it life? I've put this item in both categories.

Second, the stencil is kind of annoying. Swiping the highlighter isn't too bad, but outlining the box with pen? The stencil is bendy and it doesn't keep the pen in line. Also, while this stencil is created for my planner, the traced box is smaller than the line in the planner and it doesn't leave me much room to write my category. Let's not even get into the way the pen skips and smears. I've heard I shouldn't use gel pens with stencils and will try with a different type.

Third, it's tedious to use the stencil. To swash the highlighter. To outline the box. Over and over and over again. I'm going to try using customized stickers. I've ordered them, but haven't received them yet. It feels silly to buy stickers when I could keep using the stencil, but the stencil is truly annoying me.

The pros, though, with this system?

Everything is not a jumbled list of things to do. I can look to a category and see what I have left to do. It actually feels so much more organized. The other big plus? I feel calmer when I look at my daily lists because it's organized. I didn't realize I was low-key overwhelmed with the massive list until I tried the categories.

I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with this, although one week isn't enough of a test drive to be 100% certain. It's the calming feeling that makes me think this is going to last, though.

Another pro? I think I chose the right category names. I did add a Misc for items that don't fit into any of the other boxes.

Final results: Two thumbs up 

Categories

I watched a planner video on YouTube the other day and she said to group items together rather than having a To-Do list jumbled up with all of your life categories.

Hmm, I thought, I'm not having any problems.

But I thought about it some more and decided it would interesting to test it out and see if I like separating them more than mixed up together.

First, I needed my categories. I decided on 1) Self-Care 2) Exercise 3) Life and 4) Career (as in writing).

Next, I went looking for my stencil collection. I started using this and just swashing a mild liner line and writing the category in there, but toward the end of the week, I decided to try outlining the swash with pen.

I prefer the outline. It seems to jump off the page more. I also started out with the same color I use to make my check boxes, but switched to purple because it blended too much in the beige.

It might be helpful on my busiest days, but I already messed up and didn't leave enough room under self-care for an item that belonged there. I ended up putting it under life because I forgot about it.

Which underlined the big drawback to this system: if something comes up later and I don't leave any extra space, then it's jumbled up at the bottom of the page because there's nowhere else to put it. But if I do leave extra space and don't need it, then that will look annoying. Shrug.

I'm going to try it out for a week and see what I think about it. If separated is easier than jumbled, then it might be worth taking my chances with the spacing. Or maybe a add a fifth category called Last-Minute Adds.

I like trying out new ideas for staying organized, so I'm going to keep an open mind and see where I end up with my version of her system.

Replacement Time

While I did miss out on the 10-year CO2 detectors because I didn't know what to buy if it wasn't listed online as compatible with the mounts I already had, I did buy the 10-year smoke detectors for the house because my brother said he could install them no matter what kind of mount there was.

Thrilled to at least have four of the seven detectors off the cycle of battery replacement, I went back to the home improvement store and bought a four pack, as well as four adapters.

Those adapters are really handy because it saved rewiring and made the replacement quick and easy. About half an hour to do the four smoke detectors and the two CO2 detectors that I didn't replace because ladder.

I can't even begin to tell you how much peace of mind I have knowing those smoke detectors are not going to chirp at me. I wish I'd gotten the 10-year CO2 detectors, too, for total peace of mind, but next time I replace them, I'll do that.

You'd think they would have come up with this 10-year battery thing decades ago. Is there anyone who doesn't hate the chirping?

When I bought the CO2 detectors because of the one was chirping, the woman checking me out said she and her husband couldn't get theirs off the mount when it was chirping and they used a baseball bat. That should have been a message a long time ago about how freaking annoying those things are.

At least my house is 57% done with battery issues. Wish it was 100%, but next time.