Reading some of my recent posts, some of you may have caught on that I’ve been neglecting my Osterley lately. I’ve found that when things in my life get hectic, the smart thing to do would be to rely heavily on my planner, but I do just the opposite which only makes matters worse. My life isn’t terribly hectic, but not using a planner makes me feel like it is, and when it gets hectic, I want to use my planner even less, so I was in a bit of a catch 22, and I had to do something about it.

This week I started my first experiment by swapping my Week on a Page plus notes inserts for the spare Week on 2 Pages cotton cream inserts I had gotten with my Osterley. Keeping in mind my commitment to not buy any more planners in 2013, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have them on hand already.

Now I’m going to throw out a bit of a disclaimer here. I realize I just wrote a post on how I got out of planner fail, and to some of you it may seem like I am in planner fail now that I’m considering change. I don’t necessarily consider this planner fail though. Normally I’d be out buying 20 more planners right now, but I’m actually still keeping the same system – my monthly overview, a weekly spread for forward planning, and daily pages for planning out my day. I know it works for me and there’s no need to change it nor do I want to, and again, I’m not buying anything additional. I had the inserts already.

Anyway, I have been increasingly bothered by Filofax’s silly idea to cram five languages and foreign holidays onto a week per page diary. I mean they sell inserts specially made for most countries already printed in the correct language, so is there really still a need to print all 5 languages? Can’t we at least get a 1 language version because I really don’t need to know how to say my days of the week in other languages, and I don’t want to have to rig a set up of Week per page with note paper in between. I like having the week on the same side. If the languages weren’t enough, they have to print all the other countries’ holidays too. I mean they are interesting to know, but not something I need to be reminded of in my planner. I’d be fine without them. *end of rant*

Looking at my weekly pages, some days I just had NO room for my appointments because of all the languages and holidays. I always had room on my notes pages though, so I figured maybe I didn’t really need a full page to write my graduate assignments on. The cotton cream Wo2P diary has a notes section at the top so I’m going to test them out for a few weeks. When I had originally got them in my Osterley, I didn’t use them purely because I have OCD and all my other diary pages weren’t in cotton cream which bothered me a lot more than I’d like to admit. I really wish Filofax made the other diary inserts in cotton cream as well just so there was consistency in my planner, but I’ve found with Filofax it’s more wish in one hand and… {you know the rest…}

Another change I’m considering is swapping out the Month per page for the Month on 2 page insert I have on hand. I bought both of them at the beginning of this year knowing that I may want to swap them at some point. But that’s a little bit more change than I’m willing to take on right now. One thing at a time…