If your new to the whole shebang of planning you may be starting to feel a little overwhelmed by well, everything! There is a whole community which isn’t limited to your town or neighborhood, but infact the whole world! Maybe your struggling to keep up with all the cute amazing new stickers that are being released left right and center. Not to mention stamps, washi tapes, pens, notelets, yeah OK! I think you get the message. There are easy peasy solutions to your overwhelming predicament.

Less Is More!

Honestly you don’t need to buy everything, I mean no wonder your poor bank is crying and your wondering what your having for lunch next week with only beans and sardines in the cupboard. As much as it would be so heavenly to have every single planner product under the sun it is impossible, not just financially but where on earth would you store it all?

I alone have over 700 sticker lines in my Etsy Store, now take that a multiply by the 1.8 Million etsy shops there are… that’s alot of stickers… never mind anything else for a start!. I myself have boxes of unused planner supplies and as much as I really need or would like a new sticker set I do have to hail the reigns in sometimes and resist the next 50% off sale.

You do not need thousands of stickers, some planner addicts will disagree and I can’t sit here and say I don’t have that many I would indeed be lying, but as a newbie you don’t need them all. What’s the point in wasting half an hour looking through dozens of binders looking for one cute sticker that you know you have but you don’t know where it is? Yes it’s cute, but is it really worth wasting 30 minutes of your life looking for? So if like me you horde stickers maybe it’s time to scale it back a little and think before buying! – If anything think of how much you’ll save!

Just because Anne used 6 different washi tapes, 3 functional sticker sheets, 4 different colour pens and split 2 weekly kits into a planner spread this week doesn’t mean you have too (by the way I have no clue who Anne Is, just an example!). You don’t need to use every type of planner supply out there, Some people make white space look amazing and it is all about finding what works for you!. There’s more than enough weeks in the year to experiment with.

If your like me and have far too much to ever use, there are more than 1,000 facebook groups which are all planner related and alot accept selling/ “destasch” so now’s the time to break a habit and make some money back on some of these supplies you’ve horded!

Community Groups

There are lots of options when it comes to the community of planning, the most popular of them being Facebook groups. The trick is to join a few, surf between them find a few you like and stick with those. Don’t waste hours and hours in the groups, some have a quick pace and it’s hard to keep up with them. Also learn how to follow and most importantly unfollow specific threads. There is nothing worse than having a notification every second when someone posts.

Beware of the people selling though, they’re enablers! YouTube is another cause of omg where do you start and where do I get that from!

Join a community! Why? Because we’re all like minded people and we share our passion of planning, I’ve made some fantastic friendships online and in real life too!

Expensive Planners

So everyone’s planning in these really expensive planners that cost the world to actually get to you. Doesn’t mean you have to. You can read my Top Ten Planners of 2017 here which will give you some ideas of planners that are available, but my list isn’t limited to just those. Just because people are using certain planners doesn’t mean you have to bankrupt yourself and spend the same to be in with the trend. There are loads of planners out there to suit all kinds of budgets, sure if you want to spend £££ then go for it but remember, you could be likely to change your mind! I know 6 planners later I have. Talking of planners, remember the sizes, they come in so many different one’s these days and so many layout options but try to stick with the same size.

A quick round up of a few sizes:
* Pocket – 8.1cm x 12cm
* Personal – 9.5cm x 12.1cm
* A5 – 14.8cm x 21cm
* A4 – 21cm x 29.7cm
* US Letter Size – 8.5″ x 11″

Don’t Buy Everything!

Honestly if you have a weakness and can’t resist buying all the things, remove yourself from any planner related buy/sell groups on Facebook right now. Think of the money you’ll save to buy things that you actually want and need!

Follow your favourite sticker shops on Instagram (including mine! haha), you are more likely to find better discounts on shop Instagram accounts than trailing through Facebook for hours on end.

Only buy what you really need, OK I get it everything is pretty and you may use it one day… but will you? If you want to try something out that’s great, but you really don’t need 40 of everything do you? There are plenty of alternatives to highlighting things in your planners not just different colour pens but stamps, highlighters etc all of which you can pick up for next to nothing.

GET RID and Work Out!

If your over-run with millions of planner goodies and your still feeling overwhelmed, that’s because you have too much choice! Get rid of some of your supplies, sell them on, plan out what you will actually use and what you won’t.

Work out what you actually need to plan. Things on a day to day basis, I know I have to do washing on Saturdays, so that’s always in my planner, I also map out my appointments first so I do actually remember them!

COLOUR CODING??

NOOOOO!!! Don’t do it! You’ll regret it, you’ll never stick to it, if you absolutely have to colour code, choose a few colours to stick to. There’s better ways to colour code, why not use different colour pens for different things.

So there you have it, I really hope some of this is useful for those Planner addicts feeling a little overwhelmed.

Don’t stress and have fun!