Another Brilliant Idea Crushed by Reality

I had this grandiose plan to make my own silicone stamps for my planner. I knew exactly what I wanted and all I needed was time to sit down with my graphics program and make the images.

I'd found a video on YouTube about how to do it, so I was set. Piece of cake.

Yeah. Right.

Sadly, my graphics skills failed me. They're rudimentary at best, but trying to put together the check-ins I was looking for was beyond me. I tried. And tried. And I failed.

I went with a different plan and bought rubber stamps with the icons I wanted. I would have preferred self-inking stamps because I seriously have trouble with inking, but those were $10 per stamp. The rubber ones were slightly over $2. Big difference, especially when I was looking at about half a dozen.

So disappointing, but I've had a new brainstorm. I'm going to make my own stamps for my book journal! Those would just be words, not images, and I'm sure I can type them successfully in my graphics program. The only problem will be getting the size right. I figure printing them out will solve that issue, so I should be able to handle this.

But this is a project for future me. Stay tuned.

Another Multiple-Planner Year

Guess who's ending up with multiple planners this year? Again.

I ordered my usual planner super early, not realizing that I would be hating it by September and dying to get out of it. I have replacement options and I'm weighing which one will be it.

I also ordered the planner I'd been using in 2024 for journaling because it worked so well in this capacity. This is more formal journaling where I actually try to write nicely. I have another book where I scribble down words and it's a hot mess.

And of course, there's the planner I didn't expect to like, but fell in love with this year. It's become my EDC (Everyday Carry) planner and I'd be lost without it now that I've gotten used to having it everywhere I go.

My usual, official planner is an A5 size and on a spiral which makes it a desktop planner, not a take everywhere planner. My portable planner is a B6 and it has Tomoe River Paper, which means there are a lot of pages without it becoming a heavy tome I'm lugging along with me. I've bulked it up with vellum tip-ins and stickers, but it's still portable.

And then I came up with some ideas to combat my ADHD, all of which require a separate planner. Two extra planners.

Another method I came up with to deal with my ADHD was time tracking so I could see what I'm spending my time on. I bought booklets in traveler notebook size to handle this. I've been doing it the last few weeks, but in 2025 will start color coding so I can see how much time I'm wasting when I don't mean to relax.

Then there might have been a few accidental purchases. Planners I spotted that might absolutely work as my new daily planner, but I won't know until I try them out. I have ideas on how to use the ones that don't make the cut, so they won't go to waste.

This is a test year. A way to come up with a system that works and helps me combat my ADHD issues. I hope to have everything worked out long before 2026 planner season and keep the line up minimal.

The One with the Strategies

Being diagnosed with ADHD this far into my life has been interesting. Some of it is like, oh, that's why I've always struggled with this. And some of it is like, how did I cope for this long without anyone knowing, even myself?

I started doing more research into ADHD and found some YouTube videos, including ADHD hacks for your house. Of course, I watched them because anything that could make things go more smoothly at home would help.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I'm already doing many of these hacks. Maybe this is why I made it this far without being diagnosed?

An example is creating a station. I have a coffee station and I've done this since I started drinking coffee. My coffee maker is near a water source--either my sink or my refrigerator or both. In the cabinet over the coffee maker, I have everything I need to make coffee like paper filters and the coffee itself. I also have everything to make my cup of coffee, for instance sugar-free coffee syrup. Everything I need for every facet of coffee making either brewing or drinking, is in this area.

I've created stations in my bathroom using little caddies and baskets. My crafts go in craft totes, each craft in its own one. My knitting projects go into a bag with all the yarn for the project. If it's something I'm actually knitting, it's a tote bag. If it's a project I want to knit, but haven't started, it goes in a giant plastic bag with a zip top. Everything goes in there. The yarn I'm going to use and the pattern. That way, when I'm ready to start the project, I can just grab the plastic bag.

How do I get into trouble? When I don't put the pattern in the bag. I was knitting a project that I quit when I was over the halfway mark. I want to pick it up again but can't find the pattern. It's not in the project bag. Where did I put it? Who knows? Can I print another copy of the pattern? Sure, but the copy I was using had each row I'd knitted marked off. If I print another, I'm going to have to walk through it line by line, row by row until I figure out where I left off.

Another idea in the videos I watched was a Go-Bag for traveling. Every toiletry you need for your trip is in that bag and you never take anything out of it. I've been doing this since probably the 1990s. I kept my toiletry bag in my suitcase, and when I was planning to travel, all I needed to pack was clothes. Everything else was ready to go.

There were other ideas that I know won't work for me, like keeping track of things digitally. I've tried that and I would just delete the notification and forget all about the thing I was supposed to do. This is why I moved to a paper planner. Daily, not weekly.

Weekly planners have never worked for me because I see items listed across the week and it feels like if I got them done whenever during the week, it was okay. And because doing them on a particular day didn't matter, I never did them at all. A daily planner keeps me accountable. Yes, it's more of a to-do list than anything else, but I need it in the planner or it's too easy to blow it off.

If it's written on Tuesday, October 2nd, though, I'll actually do it on Tuesday, October 2nd because it bothers me not to check off everything on my list for the day.

The problem I'm trying to solve now, and where I've been falling down, is trying to remember to do things that don't have specific due dates. I've already mentioned the separate to-do list is too easy for me to ignore, and that digital doesn't work for me at all. So?

I think I figured out a way to keep up with a home declutter project. I created a cross between a creative journal and a bullet journal where I listed every single thing to go through. Example would be tall dress, drawer one. Tall dresser, drawer 2. And so on. I haven't actually tackled anything yet, but I'm hopeful because there is a space to check off finished items! The pieces are also very small, literally one dresser drawer at a time instead of Organize and Declutter Bedroom. That's overwhelming and will literally never happen.

But what about the random tasks? That's where I'm stymied. Another notebook? I'm still mulling.

Anyway, I just thought it was really interesting that even though I didn't know I had ADHD, I came up with strategies to function that are actually recommended. I just need a few more strategies.

Helene Comes to Town

As I'm writing this, it has been raining for the past twenty-four hours. There's been a few breaks in the rain, but they've been brief. Yesterday's rain was courtesy of a cold front, I guess? That's what I heard anyway. The rain I'm listening to now is from the hurricane.

Hurricane Helene is barreling toward Florida as a Category 4 storm. I live near Atlanta, but Helene will still be a tropical storm when it passes over us.

I have water standing in my backyard, but I'm not too worried about flooding because my house sits on higher ground. The standing water is on its way to the retention pond.

I'm a little worried about the wind. They've said gusts up to 70 MPH. We've had other hurricanes come through here after coming ashore, but this might be the strongest of the lot. At least it's the strongest I remember. I'm going to trust that everything comes through the wind okay.

My chief concern is the power going out. I have every electronic device in my possession charging. I even charged the charging bank I have for my phone. There's really not much more I can do, although I should probably find the lanterns I bought and get those ready and I will after I finish this post.

Of course, the worst of the storm will be rolling in overnight. In the dark. When you can't see what's coming. According to the weather reports I've seen, it will be cleared out by 9am tomorrow. There's still wind forecasted but not storms. We'll see if they're right.

After all this angst, I know I'm lucky to be far enough north not to take the brunt of it. I'm hoping everyone in Florida who needed to evacuate did, and that we can get through Helene without anyone being hurt.

ETA: When I wrote this, the storm hadn't destroyed towns yet. My heart goes out to the people who bore the brunt of Helene and to the families who lost loved ones. I'm saddened by the destruction left in the wake.

Can't Find This

If you've been following my blog, you know I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. This explains so much of my life and my challenges that I've struggled with since I was in grade school. Today, I'm going to talk about my biggest challenge.

I can't find anything.

One example is I wanted to learn to hand letter with the Tombow brush pens I bought. I found a video on YouTube sponsored by Tombow and they had a free, printable handout. Of course, I printed it out and was ready to use it while I watched the video, but the instructor recommended higher quality paper because regular copy paper would wreck the tip of the marker. Or I could put the page underneath tracing paper. Which I also had none of.

I would need to order tracing paper, so I put my printable away until it arrived.

My friends, my tracing paper arrived, and I cannot find my printed pages anywhere. I don't know where else to look. This came a week or two after I spent days (literally days) looking for my marker set (chisel tip, not Tombow). I'd given up and was using my colored pencils because I was not buying new markers when I hardly used the ones that were missing when it dawned on me where they were. And I was right.

If only 1) this revelation had come while I was looking for the markers and 2) I could have a similar epiphany about where my printed pages are. (Yes, I could reprint them, but dang it! I know they're here. Somewhere.)

Most of my house is clutter free. My office is not one of the places. This is where things go to disappear. I need to sort through it, get rid of things, organize myself. It's also something that I just never quite get around to doing.

Then I had a scathingly brilliant idea.

What if I created an organizing journal? One section for each room in the house. I'd break each room down in the extra small chunks. Like list everything one drawer, one shelf at a time. And check it off as I completed it. I love checking things off my to-do list.

And I had extra 8"x8" journals that I didn't use for my book journal. The one I picked had one of those historic sailing ships on it, so I decided on a pirate theme. For the electronic files that need to be cleaned up and organized, I went with space pirates.

This is still a Work In Progress and I'm waiting on items to use to put it together. I'm hopeful? Sort of. I'm a little worried that I'll burn out my enthusiasm for this idea putting the journal together. On the other hand, without a journal I've had zero interest in doing it, so maybe this will help.

More to come with pictures.