Since many of you have found me through Angela of PaperLovestory’s My Week posts or Philofaxy’s Web Finds, if you’re still here, you’ve likely noticed a major lack of anything Filofax related, so what’s going on?

{Be prepared for a picture heavy post.}

A couple of months ago I mentioned that right after posting about how I got out of planner fail, I started to think I jynxed myself. Well today, I’m here to say, I did. I’m sure if I took my own advice in that post about planner fail, I probably wouldn’t be in planner fail, but for the life of me I couldn’t even get myself to open my Filofax for like the past few months. The only reason I’ve opened it recently has been to retrieve store credit cards. Thankfully, life hasn’t been too chaotic, but towards the end of this past semester, I felt like I was all over the place, and not having a planner certainly didn’t help.

I’d imagine many of you can relate that planner fail makes us go crazy {if we aren’t already}, and my wallet is certainly not appreciating it now, but here’s what’s been happening.

My first attempt to avoid planner fail was washi tape. {Over $50 worth to be exact.} I see everyone’s pretty pages, and then there’s mine, so plain and boring. I put a sticker or two on a page to make it cute, but it ends up looking stupid instead. I really tried with the washi tape, and my weekly pages were cute, don’t get me wrong. I loved creating and seeing every one of them, but it just took way too much of my time, and I just didn’t keep up with it.

Around the same time I ordered the washi tape, I also preordered a Day Designer from Whitney English. This thing was pricey, so I had high hopes for it. It’s a monthly/daily planner with pages to really iron out your goals. I finally got it at the end of May, just in time for it to start in June. The daily pages have plenty of room to right down your schedule, your to-dos, dinners, expenses, due dates, reminders, and most important tasks. In theory it should have worked out fantastically, but it didn’t. I opened it up, wrote down the first couple days worth of tasks {only to realize I wrote them all down on the wrong week! – ultimate way to ruin that “brand-new notebook” high.} and never opened it again. From a product standpoint, it’s an outstanding planner quality-wise, and if you’re an entrepreneur with “clients”, I assume the planning pages at the beginning really would help you put things together. For my lifestyle though, it wasn’t much help. There were a couple downsides to consider aside from just the price though. It doesn’t play well with Frixion pens, and I’d assume any type of erasable writing instrument. The lines on the page started to smear, and the ink came off totally when I tried to reposition washi tape. I also wish it had tabs on the months as this is quite a large planner and there’s no way to locate where you are.

Anyway enough rambling. So I had two planners, neither of which I wanted to use. The obvious solution was to buy a third!

I caved and bought a new Erin Condren planner! I bought one 2 years ago and loved the fun colors {instant cuteness rather than spending time with washi-tape}. Sadly three weeks into using it, I sort of ruined a lot of the pages by sweeping snow off my car right into my purse all over my planner. {Note to self: put purse in car before brushing the car off, and ALWAYS close your planner, don’t leave it folded open to the current week in your bag.} With the wrinkly pages and struggling to make the layout fit my lifestyle, I gave up on it for a while. I was actually using my A5 Malden successfully for a while so I didn’t repurchase one for 2012.

Since my last Erin Condren planner, a lot of things have changed. I love the month on 2 page spread, and from knowing how badly the plain cardstock tabs held up, I’m glad they decided to laminate them. Tweaks in this year’s layout with the lines for random tracking at the bottom and goals on each week are nice as well. Overall, the quality of this planner has only gone up, and this year I actually felt the price was more justified than it was two years ago. I also splurged for some elastic bands to hold the book closed, pens, extra stickers, and a pen loop. I hacked mine a bit too. I took apart my old Erin Condren planner and added the pocket, left over stickers and folder to my new planner. I had initially planned on taking apart my new one to add everything, but the new metal spiral is a lot stronger than the plastic and I didn’t want to damage the pages. I trimmed down the sticker pages and stuck them in a folder pocket, and just snipped a slot into each of the tiny holes on the folder and pocket. Now I have an extra removable folder and pocket in my planner which is a little nicer in my opinion because I can move them around.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m seriously excited to be finally using my planner today. So much space, and it’s going to match my room once it’s all done!