Haul: Erin Condren July 2023

In July I took advantage of a sale and voucher to do an Erin Condren haul without being completely bankrupted by the shipping and taxes. I got my personal planner for 2024, and a bunch of accessories, including a pastel acrylic tablet stand and a planny pack

This post does a quick roundup of the haul.

Erin Condren Wildflowers hourly: my 2024 personal planner

For the third year in a row (!!!) I'll be using an Erin Condren hourly as my personal planner. This is by far the longest I've stayed with one planner. I have tried other layouts and options along the way, but this just works. It sits on a stand to my left when I'm on my computer (which is a lot - work, blogging, gaming etc.) I find the hourly layout amazingly helpful. I don't timeblock (at least not for personal), and at first glance the planner can look pretty empty, but it's incredibly helpful for me to see the shape of my week. My brain loves being able to see my appointments at a glance, and also being able to see the spaces: when I'm deep in a busy work day, being able to glance up and see a beautifully chill Saturday just a few days away is weirdly reassuring.

In addition to the general shape of my week, I use the hourly layout for the week to list my housecare and life admin todos. In the monthly spread, I note gratitudes, good things, and wins. This is inspired by a recenty video by Amanda of Amanda's Favorites, where she talks about her "positive pants" planner (around the 32:50 mark if you want to skip straight to the topic). And then I do some light health tracking: period tracking in the mini-calendars at the front, and weight and blood sugars tracking in the notes page at the start of the month.

I almost moved away from Erin Condren this year, for two reasons: I wasn't instantly grabbed by any of their colourways, and they've added habit trackers to the hourly. I don't use habit trackers, and I do use the notes space that they've put them in. My single biggest gripe with Erin Condren is their tendancy to see beautiful flexible notes space and dump stuff in it. Usually it's a mini-calendar, but this year they've put habit trackers in the hourly, and over half the dashboard in the monthly (which is why I won't be using their monthly for work as I'd originally planned).

However, although I'm not keen on the layout changes, and I'm not into florals generally, I really like the colours of the floral planner this year. And 95% of the time, my planner is open, which means the view is this:

No floral design, just some rather nice colours.

The other problem with trying to move away from Erin Condren is that it has a few things I really value: a coil rather than wire-o, thick paper, full days for the weekend, and a good amount of flexible notes space at the start of the month. The only real alternative I've seen would be Plum Paper. Their hourly layout looks great, but from watching other reviews, their paper is meant to be very smooth. Given that once or twice I've somehow managed to get ink to smear on Erin Condren's lovely toothy (textured) paper . . . yeah. Smooth paper would be risky. So instead of switching, I picked up some stickers that I can put over the habit trackers, to reclaim the space. I might get more to rescue the notes space used by the mini calendar as well.

I do feel a bit silly splurging on a premium planner that I then I have to adapt to actually meet my requirements. But I honestly haven't seen anything else that ticks as many boxes as this one, and I'm really reluctant to break from something that's been working for me consistently.

Pastel acrylic tablet stand

I love having planners and notebooks set up as dashboards on the shelf to the left of my desk, so I took a bit of a chance on this stand. It's designed for your phone or tablet, but it actually fits notebooks and thinner planners really well.

Check out my video showing what the stand can hold.

Planny pack

Yes, it's the item with the silly name! I already have one of these, and like them so much I bought a second (in the same pattern), to have mainly as a back-up for the first. They act as a combination planner elastic, pencil case, and phone holder. I've even found I can fit my kindle inside it, which is brilliant.

The rest of the haul

I picked up some list pads. I've had these before, and finished the last batch. I also got a neoprene folio, but it seems Erin Condren are discontinuing these, so will skip reviewing it. It's a shame though, I'm pleased with it and would have loved to get it in another size as well. Finally, I got a set of snap-in pockets. I love the snap-in options for Erin Condren, and these should be great for holding stencils, stickers, and maybe the occasional notes page.

Wrap up

This is another "look what I bought" post, similar to the previous one. After this, I want to get into some more discussion-type posts, looking at how to figure out your planning system, layouts to try, and maybe talking about some of the quirks of my own approach to planning. I'll probably also do a more detailed review of the Erin Condren hourly planner.