Back to School: What Day is It? {giveaway}

Disclosure: Mead provided me with a free On-the-Go Family planner (although I already own three of them).  All opinions contained within this post are my own.

It’s Wednesday, and my Facebook stream has been full of “First Day of School” pictures for a whole week as friends all over the country send their kiddos back to the books and we all return to a more normal and probably more busy schedule. Sometimes these new schedules are hard to manage! Today I’m sharing my favorite schedule-managing tool and a chance to win one for yourself.

I consider myself to be both semi-organized and fairly tech-savvy, but a couple years ago, I went awol and decided to go back to a paper planner. I researched planners online and at office supply and stationary stores like crazy, until I finally settled on one that I love. After all that searching, I found it at Target. Last fall I posted about the different schedule management tools I was trying, to include my beloved planner. But, after all that, the planner is really the only one that has stuck.  Let me show it off to you:

This is the Organizher On-the-Go Family Planner. I first bought this planner two years ago, and then last year I bought two so I would have a back-up, just-in-case (I sometimes tend to lose things. Ok. Alot sometimes.).  So, the image above shows one of this year’s new prints in purple, and one of last year’s prints in grey.  One of the things I like about these planners is that they are about the size of a novel. It fits well into my bag, and is sturdy enough to withstand being hauled around everywhere for a year.  The elastic strap is handy for keeping it shut and keeping loose papers that I tuck inside from sneaking off.

Inside, each month has a page for a month at a glance that includes places to make lists and track projects. At the beginning of the year, I go through and add gifts I need to buy, annual events, and seasonal projects I know I will need to do.

Each month has five weekly planner pages, which is nice because that means there is an extra week if you are having a having a bad week and want to just start over (kidding.  This planner is very helpful, but it isn’t magical, unfortunately). The week view is the main reason why I love this planner.  It has a row for my own appointments, called “mine” and four additional rows called “theirs” to keep track of other schedules.  Since my kids are young and generally have roughly the same schedule, I just give them one row.  I use the other rows to track different jobs that I do for our family business, freelance consulting, and blogging.  I think this feature makes the planner so flexible and a great fit for anyone. And finally, at the bottom, there is a row for meal planning!  I use this mostly to figure out which nights we will actually be home to have dinner.  I love having the whole she-bang at a glance in front of me.

Other great features of the planner include:

• The Calendar section of the planner is completely blank – you fill in the dates. So, you can start this planner at any point in the year.
• Blank pages at the end of each month for notes
• A website and blog password tracker
• Places to list books to read and movies to see
• An agenda-style calendar at the back to list birthdays, holidays, etc.
• stickers that you can use to mark specific events like parties, school breaks, doctor visits, and more.

So, would you like to win one?  Organizher is going to send one of you a free On-The-Go Family planner.  All you need to do is use Rafflecopter to earn some entries.  On Wednesday, September 4th, I will randomly draw a winner, and Organizher will ship a planner to that winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: Mead provided me with a free On-the-Go Family planner (although I already own three of them).  All opinions contained within this post are my own.

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