Cassie DeNisco

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How to Stay Organized this New Year!!

I love to share blog posts on how I plan! This year I wanted to put a twist on how to stay organized this year! I have recently moved more towards digital planners. If you know me, you know this is a shock because I have been a pen and paper girl forever. However, I recently discovered some really helpful digital tools that honestly have made the paper planners useless!

My all time favorite paper planner is the Day Designer. I love this for so many reasons, but my top is it has a spot to plan out your entire day. Working at the studio in the evenings means I seriously need to plan my mornings to be as productive as possible. I actually was able to swap the paper for these 2 super helpful digital organizers!

Google Keep

This is the real game changer that most people don’t know exists! It’s essentially an online to do list, however you can share it and collaborate on it! We use this at the dance studio but I’ve started using it in my personal life too. I treat it essentially as my giant life to do list.

Any time I get a thought, I jot it down. I have the app on my phone so it’s always near me and accessible. Having a big to do list seems daunting, but I love just seeing everything that has to be done whether it’s today or 2 months from now.

I’ve recently started organizing it with the day of the week then the item to keep my even more on top of things. I seriously love it and I like that I can share it too. I found it super helpful for even ordering Christmas presents with Jordan because we were able to share the list and check off who we got for!

The best part is, this is a free service through Google! If you have a Google account, you can access it today and really start to get your life organized! I did try the Apple Reminders app which is similar to this, but Google is more universal so I love this so much more!

how to stay organized

Google Calendar

Like I just mentioned, I was an Apple girl but it’s not universal like Google is! I just love that I can share calendars with people so that everyone sees the exact same info. This is great for my entire week or month in a more general fashion. I have it set to download to my iPhone calendar app so that I literally see everything on all my devices.

This is a great resource to just share with others. Family events or just work stuff is so important to share so that’s why I switched to this. It helps the people around me to be as organized as I am so it makes my life easier.

I’ve even tried to plan out my days through this but most of the times I would just rather have this as an overall calendar. I do know people who block out their day with this and use it as their planner so it definitely can work for you!

how to stay organized

As you can see I really don’t need the whole pen & paper thing when I have these two free resources. I love both and how they seriously keep me on track and productive. As we head into the new year, it’s essential figure out how to stay organized and I know these both will work for you!

Be sure to check out my Pinterest here and a yummy recipe here!

How I Use my Day Designer Planner

With the summer half over, I thought now would be the perfect time to share how I use my day designer planner. Back to school is right around the corner. There is no other time like the present to get your stuff together. This is going to be a bit of a mix of why I love Day Designer and how I use it.

If you know me, I am a huge planner. My resolution this year was actually to go paper less but that just didn’t work out. I need to write things down so that I remember them and see them. My go to planner is the Day Designer Weekly Academic Planner. I have tried so many planners and this is the one that perfectly fits my lifestyle.

The first step in my planning journey is to fill out the month calendar. I like to do this either a few days before the new month or on the start of the new month. I write down all of the events I know of and my work schedule so that there is no need to wonder what goes on. This post is written in July so I don’t have much other then work and a grad party on the calendar!

day designer planner

After I have everything written on the month, I go in to each week and re-add the events the day they take place. This helps to keep me in the loop each day of what is going on. It also ensures I won’t forget anything.

For each week, I actually won’t plan it out until the week of. I sit on a Monday and fill out each day with the tasks I want to get done. Sometimes I will pre-write these things down if I know they are coming up. I use my planner as almost an organized sticky note. I make to-do lists for each day and also have the bigger things like work and events too.

Because this post was prepared in June and I didn’t want to write out my whole July to do list yet, I included this picture of my previous planner. This is a day designer mini. When I was in college, this was literally my favorite type of planner. I liked how each day had the times so I could block off what I was doing when.

day designer planner

Now that I am out of school and working for myself, I need to see the whole week. It’s important to just write down a list of tasks. I also needed more room which is why I went up to the next size day designer. I also rarely use the top 3 sections so it was a waste.

If I know anything about planners, its that you really have to try them for yourself. I could tell you all day why I love Day Designer but you just wouldn’t know until you try it. This is what works best for my lifestyle and how I like to plan. It might not work for you but you never know until you try!

Let me know in the comments below how you like to plan.. are you a paper planner or a digital one?

You can read my other planning posts here.

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