november reset

Let's get organized.

Before we dive in:

Last week was heavy. There are no words that can bring universal comfort in this situation or believe me I would offer them here. What I can offer you is this small distraction of a little monthly reset and the promise of an open ear if you want to be listened to.

I’m here and I am your friend.

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I’ve never been one to believe in the power of habit tracking, or turning life into a to do list. I have always enjoyed ritual and routine. So it was only natural that after leaving behind school issued paper agendas and calendars I would be craving that comfort in adult life.

Which is why there are a couple agendas? planners? to do lists? I have incorporated into my family and personal life. I am going to detail them both below and take you through how I set them up each month. Planners are personal, this is what works for me but maybe doesn’t work for you, and that’s ok.

Personal Planner

For my personal planner I use Cozy K’s stil planner.

I know what you’re thinking, “Naomi what do you have to plan while you aren’t working or going to school?” Good question. I “plan” really fun shit. Even if you don’t have a job there is limited time in the day and you have to prioritize the things that are most important to you. My planner, in a way, is a journal of my life. It captures all the fun things I do and helps me prioritize my free time.

So to begin, I start planning each month with reflecting where I was last month, which in this case was October.

On the 1st I set up a monthly roadmap. This page details things I want to accomplish and habits I’d like to form. I add a good mix of things here that are a stretch for me to do and some things I know I will accomplish. At the end of the month I highlight anything I actually did and cross through things I didn’t accomplish. So at the beginning of November I revisited my October goals to check in and you can see how I did here.

A “journal-y” aspect of my planner I tried in October was taking one picture every day. Every week I printed and pasted the photos into the calendar view of my planner, since I use google calendar for all my appointments (I’ll get to that later) I didn’t need this page to be functional. At the end of month it was nice to flip through and see all the things I got up to. It’s a good reminder to lookback and realize you really did have more good days than bad.

One of my favorite features, and what originally drew me to this planner, is the “tracker” inserts you can buy. I have the book and games trackers added into my planner. Here I do a monthly review of all the video games I played and any books I read. There are also more detailed pages I use throughout the month where you can write in depth about each book and game as you complete them.

The reading list reminds me of those personal reading list pages our teachers would print out and send us home with… you know the ones your parents would have to sign to validate you actually read the books you said you did. Although no one signed mine, I promise I did the homework!

At the end of checking in on my October goals I remove the entire months pages from the agenda and put it with other past months in a memory box I keep. I don’t personally like having a bulky planner so I usually only keep the current month in the binder while I store past months to look back on.

Then starts the setup for next month. My favorite part of the new month is making these little mood boards at the beginning of my planner. It’s the first thing I see every day and is a good way to live in the season you are in. Here is the mood board I created for November.

This page, apart from just being adorable, represents things I want to do this month. You’ll see here I will be watching the Macy’s day parade… probably at midnight in Europe hehe, I want to spend time by the fire, watch Charlie Brown, drink 100 cups of tea and cook with my friends and family.

The final step in my monthly planner set up is filling out the new monthly roadmap. Like you saw at the beginning of October this is where I write out my goals for the month and any kind of media I want to consume.

After that my personal planner is ready to go for November!

Family Planner:

While I love my pen and paper, family planners should be digital. We should both have access to the same information at all times at the touch of our hands. That’s why we use google calendar for our “family calendar” and Notion for our family info page and joint to do list. The calendar is updated constantly but I usually do a check in on the family notion once a month to make sure everything is up to date.

Family Google Calendar

Basically any appointment either of us has goes here. While my personal planner is my daily to dos (go to the post office, exercise, write my blog, etc.) this is where I keep every appointment and delivery. Being able to see each others obligations has helped us in planning and organizing dates and life around each other thoughtfully. So in our google calendar you will see vet appointments for kit, doctor appointments, or any other meetings we have with accountants/lawyers/etc. You will also find family members birthday’s and any guest visits we have coming up. This helps keep us from feeling responsible in reminding one another. Each of us makes sure to add in any joint or personal obligations as they arise.

Notion

Our Notion, we like to joke, is our family homepage. A feature that helped us pick Notion as our management app is google calendars compatibility, you can see it loads at the bottom of the page, making this a truly one stop shop for our lives. Anything we need to know we keep organized here. Wonder who our doctors are to make an appointment? Check the important info tab! Want to know what packages we are expecting? Yep there is a tab for that! Where is that hotel confirmation number for the hotel we booked in December? Check the travel plans tab! Or possibly the most important, what’s for dinner this week? Check the family meal plan! We even have a tab detailing everything about Kit’s life and schedule that we share with dog sitters or for his godparents (Caleb and Minami) to have in the event of our death…. luck favors the prepared they say.

Honestly people comment on how happy our marriage seems all the time and it is - BECAUSE we put in work to make sure all the horrible adult bits don’t get in the way. We keep our family organized and our expectations plain, we each have a role in making our home run smoothly and we both treat it like coworkers gunning for the same promotion, always trying to be the one doing the most.

To break out one family task as an example: every week I populate the meal plan with what I want to cook and link to my recipes. Michael knows to check it, add the ingredients for each recipe to the grocery list and pick those up on his way home from work. I cook dinner. He does the dishes. The mental and physical load of running a house will never be even but we try to come as close as possible.

Plus we make it fun. You’ll see we have a pizza counter going (that tracks how many pizza’s we have eaten on our new pizza oven this year). In our “to do” section we have a “weekend fun list” where we each write down things we want to do over the weekend for fun, that way we make sure we both get to do the things we like.

This may seem extra but it works for us and we rarely have miscommunication about our family schedule or expectations.

NOW if you made it this far I have a little treat for you! Much like the mood boards I make for my planner, my sister in law makes these amazing monthly phone backgrounds which she kindly shared with me and said I could share with you! Here is her November background, everyone say thank you Caroline!!

Hopefully there are some things here you found helpful and if not, then hopefully it satisfied a little nosey human curiosity to see my schedule laid out so publicly. Either way thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading along on my little blog.

Nomi