Weekly Menu Planner

My Weekly Menu Planner is now on the back of my Notes Page Marker. My planning is very simple and can be changed at any time. It keeps me from wasting any food and saves time and money in the process. I only mark in our main meal of the day as breakfasts are either toast, muesli, a bacon buttie or a full English and lunches revolve around eggs, salad or soup.

I've just labelled the days and at the start of the week, or any time in between I put in the meat part of our diet. For this example the meat is chicken which, of course lends itself to many recipes. This particular week starts with roast chicken, with more of the chicken used with chips for the Tuesday meal. Any left-over bits I will use in a pie, served with veggies and potatoes. For Friday it will be fish as I am in town and will pass the fishmonger's. Saturday's meal will be liver and onions for DH and a bacon and potato bake for me, which are freezer meals prepared last week. Sunday we will have a pasta dish containing any left over or frozen veggies.

This plan leaves many options open as to how I want to cook. Also I can change my mind completely as I've written in a Pilot Frixion pen which will rub out entries easily. e.g.- if the chicken doesn't stretch to all those meals or if we go out to eat, I'll just rub out and adjust accordingly.

By having freshly prepared plus frozen meals from bulk cooking I am able to streamline our meals and not stress about what we can have for tea.

Happy Planning!

A-Z in a Filofax

I've added to my A-Z sections in my personal Brown Hamilton.

Under B

Baby

Bedroom Cleaning

Birthday Cards - to make and to be made

Blood Pressure

D

Dining Room Cleaning

E

Emergency Numbers

H

Hairdresser Appointments

K

Kitchen Cleaning

M

Master Grocery List

Meter Readings

Music Jobs

W

Weight

Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Planning

Different sections in my Filofax

My main organiser has different sections which help me get things done and keep me organised.

Monthly Dividers - These are card dividers with sticky out tabs which divide up the pages into months. In my organiser they are decorated according to the season.

Year at a Glance - This is a fold out sheet or a 2 page spread showing all the days in the year. It can be used for tracking purposes, highlighting important dates or just as a reference.

Month at a Glance - More detail for the days of the month can be added here. My month at a glance is just a list of the days and dates. On there I can see doctor appointments, volunteer days, trips out, which bins to put out, when to order my pills and visits or visitor dates.

Monthly To-Do List - Here I can list anything I should do or want to do in the month. For example in February I want to continue to save a certain amount each week, make a March divider, weed the garden and use up the veg in the freezer.

Daily Pages - On the daily page I note down any tasks I wish to accomplish during the day, any additional tasks I did accomplish, what we intend to eat for meals, how much I've spent and any appointments.

Weekly Review - At the end of each week I summarise various things I want to track such as how much money I've spent at different places, how much I've managed to de-clutter, what projects I've started, how I slept and any health matters.

Monthly Review - At the end of each monthly section of daily pages I summarise the weekly summaries. These summaries are not set in stone and I may want to track other things in different months such as which veg I plant etc.

Today Marker - This is an easily removable card or ruler that acts like a book mark, indicating today's page.

Tabs - These just stick out from the pages indicating different sections of the organiser.

My Filofax is set up to work for me and it is always a work in progress as I keep reviewing, focussing and refining tasks.

Happy Planning.

Tan Pocket Cross

I was expecting. No, not babies. I was expecting a parcel in the post following a winning bid on Ebay. While waiting I dismantled a small notebook from B&M. The outer cover came off.

The pages were trimmed ...

… and holes were punched.

Here's what was in the parcel.

A Tan Pocket Cross Filofax.

This one I'm going to use as my Bullet Journal. The trimmed pages from my notebook were pressed into service …

… and a March calendar was set up. The rest of the pages are blank so far as I'm finishing February in my old bullet journal.

The pocket seems quite big and plenty more pages will fit in it. It feels silky smooth and has a lovely leather smell. I will keep this by the side of my bed for my nocturnal inspirational thoughts!!

Happy Planning.

Fuchsia A5 Filofax Original

Larger than a Personal this A5 lends itself to many uses. In my case it is my Hobby binder. It looks, feels and smells gorgeous. As always it was a bargain (on Ebay) as it has a mark on the back which to me is not noticeable as I only look at the front and the inside.

I've used my ex-calendar for the monthly dividers.

The first section houses my Ebay data ...

… with a spreadsheet listing items for sale or bought, date sold etc.

Behind that is more detail about the item - description, postage and so on.

Here's the second section for German homework.

I'm hoping that the more exercises I do the more I will understand the German language. (It's not working yet!)

The third section is dancing information and houses ...

… detailed instructions for various ballroom and sequence dance steps.

Here's the next monthly divider. By having monthly dividers for the Ebay and German I can see how much I've achieved each month.

I do have other hobbies but these do not lend themselves to being put in this binder.

Wishy Washy

Old stop watch plastic containers just lend themselves to become ...

Washy holders for ...

Liddle Iddle decorative tape.

Even the packaging doesn't go to waste.

I covered the lettering with tape and ...

… made one of them into a note holder/page marker.

It's easily removable ready to be put on the next day. My page is decorated with one of the tapes as it's a celebration day today.

Can you see the page marker?

Let's celebrate February with my recycled month divider.

There's nothing wishy washy in this diary/planner.

Happy Planning.

Brown Personal Hamilton

This Filofax was a chance find in a Charity Shop. It was priced £2.50 and was hidden among other small zipped bath bags, phone covers and small handbags. It's a brown Personal Hamilton and is definitely the most masculine of my collection, being an official looking colour suited to an office worker and professional rather than a girly, eye-catching colour. (Am I being sexist here?) It appealed to me because:-

a. it was a Filofax

b. it was leather

c. it was a bargain

d. it looked unloved

I jazzed it up slightly on the inside with sticky notes (I've noticed that one has to mention sticky notes when enthusing over an organiser), page flags (I have to mention those as well) and Washi tape cards (cheapy little strips from Japan bought on Ebay).

I'm not using this for credit cards - 

- but for my Filofax A-Z lists. My dividers came from the CS, bought for 50p and I scoured the Internet as to what to do with them. They add more bright colour to lift the dull brown. Many Filofax addicts have a surfeit of A-Z dividers but few know what to do with them. By far the most popular way of using them (apart from addresses) was to have an A-Z file. The problem starts there, though, as few people know what to keep in each section.

I let the dividers sit for a while and then off loaded all the things I wanted to record, list and log into the different sections.

Here's what I've filed so far -

A- Authors. I generally read a book and don't care who the author is so I thought I'd make a list of authors of books that I really enjoyed reading so that I could look out for more of their books.

B- Books I've read and Books recommended by other people, Baby, Bedroom Cleaning, Birthday Cards, Blood Pressure

C- Car details, Christmas Ideas, Crochet, CPR

D- Contact numbers of Dancers (another hobby), Dining Room Cleaning

E- Emergency

F- Filofax details, Finance (money spent)

G- Garden log

H- Health, Hairdresser

I- Ideas

J- Jobs that need to be done around the house

K- Kitchen cupboards (what's in them), Kitchen Cleaning

L- Lent - what we've lent to other people and the date so we don't forget, Loose Ends - a list of small things that can be done with no urgency

M- Medical log, House Maintenance log, Map (Where else would you put the Filofax map?), Master Grocery List, Meter Readings, Music Jobs

N- Needle list for knitting and crochet

O- Oven timer - how to set (I always forget.)

P- Packing list for holidays, Passwords

Q-

R- Routines - daily, weekly, yearly

S- details of my Singer sewing machines, Sayings

T-

U-

V-

W- Words (unusual), Weight

Y-

Z-

There are only a few gaps and I'm sure I will be able to fill them sometime. As always Filofaxes are very fluid affairs where the set-ups can be changed regularly.

The back of the Hamilton has a zipped pocket, indicated by the card. I don't keep anything in there.

Here's the back with another little hiding place. I find that if I put anything in a hiding place I'll forget it's there.

Happy Planning!

* Added later

Decorative Tape

Bargain decorative tape (Washi tape trips off the tongue a bit better) bought today at Lidl. Each pack of 3 was just 99p so 3 packs were purchased. 

It seems that many people need to decorate their pages with this product. I've had a go in the past but because I want my pages to be biodegradable I've not decorated them too much. I've just looked up Washi tape on the Internet and apparently it is eco-friendly and I've also just looked at the back of one of these packets and it is. I shall have to get creative with it now.

I've still got a long way to go.

Happy Planning.

Lime Green Piazza Personal Filofax

My Filofax adventure has already started and this blog is going to document my Filofax journey from now. My collection has grown in a year proving that having one organiser is just not enough. 

Let's start with the personal Filofax that I'm using as my diary - my lime green Piazza.

What a refreshing sight to start the new year with all the promise of Spring colours ahead. Picture the leaves of snowdrops, crocci and daffodils - fresh spring greenery for a brilliant new year ahead. In this planner I have the months of January, February and March - my nearly spring and spring months. I've opened up to the first divider page which is February.

Here's a closer look. My dividers continually change and this year's feature verses and homemade decoration.

Turning over there's a yearly calendar downloaded from Philofaxy. This picture was taken at the beginning of January.

No fancy decoration next for the monthly pages, just a list of the days and dates and space to record appointments and important events.

Over again and here's my birthday and anniversary pages - just a yearly calendar with the birthdays marked in.

The January pages get put to the back of the organiser.

I use the Today ruler to navigate to today's page and also here is a small reminder of rooms to *sparkle* each day.

My January pages were white and now the February ones are pink. I'm just using up the paper I have already rather than buy new. I had the day stamps but unfortunately the ink leaks through the paper. Not to worry.

The January divider is now here near the back of the Filofax.

Here's the obligatory charm attached to the back zipped pocket. It's really an old eating thrown out by my daughter.

That's it - a tour through one my Filofaxes and this is one of my favourites. I hope you enjoyed the tour.

Happy planning.