While many people now use their phones to manage their schedules and to do lists, there’s a massive movement going old school with paper planners and planner accessories. Companies like The Planner Society have more than 145,000 followers on Instagram and their Facebook group has more than 27,000 members. Today on Fox 2 News in St. Louis, I talked about the stress relief benefits of creative planning with planner stickers and accessories and the different options you have (click here to see video of my segment). Below is more info and links to get your planning and relaxing!
Why get into creative planning with paper planners?
- It takes something that might otherwise be tedious and overwhelming and makes it fun. It’s a lot more fun to work through a to do list that’s colorful and surrounded by motivational phrases like, “You’ve got this” and “Today will be great!”
- It relieves stress, because it promotes mindfulness (being in the present moment) as you focus on decorating your planner, so it’s great for your mental health.
- It’s a creative outlet that doesn’t require you to be an artist so anyone can get into it.
- It’s quick and easy or be a hobby you can really dive into when you want. It brings in elements of scrapbooking without you needing to sit down for hours at a time. You can lay down a few stickers in just a few minutes. And yet you can also play for hours when you have the time.
- It’s also a great way to connect with others and be part of a community with common interests. There are tons of planner groups on Facebook to share and chat with, as well as groups you can meet up with like the St. Louis Planner Ladies group (I just met up with this group over the weekend to work on my own planners).
Planner Basics. To get started, you can take most any paper planner (I picked up the Kate Spade one below at T.J. Maxx for less than $20) and start decorating it with planner stickers and washi tape, which is a decorative tape that comes in a seemingly endless number of designs. Washi adds a lot of personality to a page at a great price (just a few bucks a roll or less if you buy a set).
Michaels is a great place to start. They have tons of planners to choose from, a whole line of planner stickers from their Recollections line and they carry The Happy Planner line from Me & My Big Ideas, which makes the super popular planner value packs with 30 pages of stickers for planners. Recollections and Me & My Big Ideas both also make awesome washi tape (available at Michaels stores and at michaels.com).
Advanced Planning. Once you get into planning, you’ll probably want to go to the next level. There are lots of shops with really cool, unique planners and accessories. Here in St. Louis, Lara Smith runs the online shop The Ink Road, which has beautiful planners and accessories and her own line of Ink Road stamps that can be used in planners and for making cards (available at theinkroad.com).