10 Reasons You Should Decorate Your Planner

I’ve been using planners since I started working as a lawyer about 20 years ago (yikes! Has it been that long?). I learned from my boss that you needed to have a calendar to keep up with all of the appointments and obligations we have as working women.

So, I got what everyone else had: a professional-looking At-A-Glance planner. It was a weekly planner with a soft, padded cover. The pages were mostly black, white, and blue. And, because it was a “Quick Notes” version, it also had these sections for notes, which were in yellow.

Hating the look of correction tape on my page, I tended to use pencil to write in my tasks and appointments. It gave the page a shabby look as the pencil always seemed to fade and smear over time. And, a shabby planning page is just sad and depressing to look at. Making matters worse, the color scheme wasn’t very attractive.

And, since I’m being honest, every year I would get my new planner and recommit to using it to keep organized only to lose steam a few months out. Using a planner became like every other repeating New Year’s resolution- something that seemed good in theory but became a short-lived activity.

I wound up getting a new one of these planners every year I was at the firm where I started out practicing law. When I transitioned over to public defense work with the government, I brought that planner with me and asked for another once the year was up. It didn’t occur to me to change things up. I just figured I was bad at planning.

So, why did I keep asking for this planner that I barely used and didn’t really like working in? I think a big part was that I didn’t really know what planner options were out there. At that time, I was a working mom with young kids. I had no time for social media and didn’t really look to see what was out there.

The Slow Transition from Plain to Pretty Planners

I stayed with my sad planner and didn’t really think much of it as I went through my days. Besides, my head was on pretty straight. At that time, I only had the one job and the kids were in elementary school, so I didn’t have too much to juggle.

Then came the wakeup call. I had been invited to lunch by a faculty of the law school to discuss a new mentoring opportunity. He had worked under me for a year after I graduated law school and thought I’d make a good mentor, which sounded like a wonderful opportunity.

My friend set our meeting for lunch at a restaurant near my office. I checked my schedule, and saw I was free. I hadn’t seen him in a while, so I was really looking forward to catching up and learning about the program at the school.

Well, that date for lunch came and I hadn’t written it down anywhere. No surprises here- I missed the lunch and wound up standing him up. After he called to ask what had happened and I realized what I had done, I was MORTIFIED.

How could I have missed that lunch date? And, how awful must it have been for him to be sitting alone in a restaurant and then realizing that I was not going to show. He was incredibly gracious and understanding about what happened, but I couldn’t let it go.

It was such an awful feeling, and I felt there weren’t enough apologies to make up for it. Even after we rescheduled and I made sure to go, I knew that I had to change my planning ways.

So, being the researcher I am, I started looking into planning and was shocked at what I found on the internet. There were so many types of planning methods and even more planners to go with them. What I thought was a small collection of books lining the wall of the local office supply store turned out to be a universe of paper weights, styles, book binding options, and layouts.

I had never heard of vertical weekly spreads or planners that had only monthly views and notebook paper. There was an entirely new vocabulary to learn and so many options, my head was swimming. (For my two-part series on planner terms see the first article here and the second article here).

I found some blog articles that rated the best planners for women that year and learned about the pros and cons of various planners. It was through one of those articles that I decided on my first weekly planner.

Rather than go with one that in any way resembled the purely utilitarian setup of that At-A-Glance, I decided to change my style up entirely. I went with a colorful, art-filled planner with a gold coil binding and lots of stickers. And I never looked back.

Pretty Planners and Decorative Touches

My move to owning a very flowery, girly planner felt like a big step, so I kept my pages pretty plain. It was enough that I was running around with this brightly colored planner with a huge coil that I kept in an A4 organizer (#Ad). I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb in my straight-laced, plan planner profession.

But, I soon saw that the spacious sections for each day in my planner allowed me to divide up space for work and personal tasks. I bought some skinny washi for this task, and found myself buying some standard sized washi to decorate the top of my pages.

Just a splash of color couldn’t hurt, could it? Besides, I found myself opening my planner a few times a day just to catch a glimpse of my cheery pages. My favorite washi turned out to be this set of colorful skinny washi that I used to divide my days. (#Ad)

Soon after dipping my toe in the waters of washi, I found that there were some planner stickers that had words and icons specific to planning. Whether they were images of stethoscopes for doctor’s visits, icons of cleaning supplies or TVs, and nicely lettered words that noted things like “meeting” and “appointment.”

I realized that stickers had come a long way from what I knew as a child. They were not just fun and colorful little badges that I could collect in a sticker book. Stickers could be functional and help to point out when important things were happening on a particular date! (Yes, this was a revelation to me). Here is a fun and functional set (#Ad).

But, I reasoned, could a little extra decoration hurt? I started finding Happy Planner sticker books on sale and soon had a growing collection. I’m a sucker for florals, so I tend to have a few of those types of books. Here is my latest obsession- the Happy Planner Pressed Florals sticker book, which I used to make the layout above. (#Ad)

I soon found that there was more to planning than just writing things down and checking the book regularly. I could use color-coding dots to point out which tasks I had on a particular date or which goals I needed to work on. These are the ones I’ve been using for planning for the past several years. (#Ad)

I also discovered that I didn’t have to use pencil in my new planner. There were erasable pens that would neatly erase but still look like ink in my planner. And, the same brand also sold highlighters! Frixion gel pens (#AD) and highlighters (#Ad) were a game changer, and I am using them to this day.

And, for the times that I wanted to use thin or thick markers to color in parts of my planner or create hand-written headings, I found a great set of markers that are just like a name brand set of twin-tip markers (that I won’t name, but you can guess!) (#Ad)

I eventually gave up trying to make my planner look so professional and gave in to the joy of randomly placing cute stickers throughout the weekly layouts. They were girly, and pretty, and so much fun. It took no time at all to add a few stickers, but the result was more practical than I had ever thought it might be.

The more I dressed up my new planner, the more I found myself wanting to look at it. I traveled back and forth to work with my planner, and the first thing I did when I got to work was take out and look at my beautiful planner. Soon enough, I had set up a portable stand to hold my planner open all day. (#Ad)

I came to realize that the colored pens, dost stickers, functional planning stickers, washi tape, and highlighters all managed to keep me excited about and in my planner. These decorative touches reinforced what I wrote and made it more likely that I would check my planner throughout the day. Unlike before, when I had a boring, drab planner, my new planner made me want to open and admire it.

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The Joy of Decorative Planning

For years, I thought peppering stickers throughout my weekly planner, along with using washi and fun pens, would be the extent of my ability to decorate a planner. I mean, my foray into the planner world, which had me on Pinterest and Instagram, had revealed planner owners whose planners looked like scrapbooks or works of art.

I was particularly impressed with people who had vertical planning spreads with fully decorated pages- complete with offset boxes and coordinating stickers. But, I didn’t think I had the time or the inclination to get into that level of planner decoration. It was so well-planned and curated, it must take these folks hours to get their pages to look that nice.

So, time passed, and during that time, I continued to admire these pretty planning pages. That time also involved my getting a second job and running a year-round intern program at my office. As a result, I wound up needing a daily planner to supplement my weekly.

Eventually, I didn’t have room in either planner to properly plan out my household tasks, to dos for the kids, fitness routines, or self-care. This is how I ended up using multiple planners. There was so much to do and no one or even two books could contain it.

As I contemplated adding another planner to my routine, I remembered my love of those beautifully decorated vertical spreads. I had never used a vertical planner before, but it seemed perfectly suited to the kind of compartmentalized planning I envisioned for what would become my after-work planner.

After much research (of course, as always), I settled on a classic-sized, vertical weekly Happy Planner. I figured I could assign one box to home routines, another to family, and the third to selfcare and fitness. It worked! I started using this Happy Planner so I didn’t have to fill up my main planner with these to-dos and I could leave my main planner in my bag when I got home and just use my after-work planner to help manage the rest of my day.

The only thing was- those empty boxes were pretty drab. Even though my first Happy Planner (which I wrote about here) was very pretty and even my second one had a dreamy theme (reviewed it here), the pages just didn’t call to me like my more decorated weekly planner.

I decided to buy a couple of Happy Planner sticker books with boxes and decorative stickers to see if I could come close to some of the lovely pages I’d been seeing on social media. It quickly became apparent that I could not make a pretty page in a short amount of time.

I struggled to put together layouts that looked pretty and cohesive. It didn’t come naturally to me and I felt like I didn’t have enough supplies to get it done properly. Worse than that, it took so long, I gave up and for many months, I had my blah pages to look at, which made it a challenge to motivate myself to work out of that planner.

In the summer of 2020, during the pandemic and civil unrest that took place, I felt the need to use my little platform to promote the cause of Black-owned businesses. And, since my passion lies in planning, I began highlighting Black-owned planner and stationery companies in the first of two articles: My first resource roundup and the second roundup, published a few months later.

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Through my research into Black-owned planner companies, I found several that sold sticker kits- ones that are specifically designed for vertical layouts like the one in my Happy Planner. I also found sticker books by folks who run responsible businesses, like my favorite sticker maker, @Kellofaplan.

I even found some kits on Amazon that were easy to use to make decorative layouts. This large bundle of sticker kits had everything from a stargazer theme to Wonder Woman (#AD).

With the help of these perfectly coordinated sticker kits and sticker books, I learned to put together simple, pretty, and quick planner spreads. And, just like with my main weekly planner, I now find myself looking at this planner every day after work.

Top 10 Reasons You Should Decorate Your Planner

If you’ve made it this far in the article, I applaud you. I know I just went through a lot of my personal planning backstory to explain why I decorate my planner. But, even if you didn’t and just skipped to this section using the Table of Contents plugin, here are my top 10 reasons why you should consider decorating your planner.

1. It keeps you in your planner. This is the absolute number one reason (hence why I listed it first) to start adding embellishments to your planner. When you take the time to decorate your planner, it provides an aesthetically pleasing paper craft that you can admire and gaze at. In short, you’re just more likely to open the book and use it when it looks pleasing to your eye.
2. It’s like regression therapy. You get to play with pens, markers, and stickers. It’s like being a kid again, and that can be a wonderful stress reliever.
3. Every week looks different. You can choose to have a theme for your planner and only use florals or animal prints. Or, you can mix it up and try different themes each week. The bottom line is, no two weeks will look alike. You’ll never get bored with looking at it.
4. You can justify time to be creative. Many of us don’t make enough time to do things that are simply creative. And, with the easy sticker kits and planning supplies out there, it’s easy to put together a pretty page even if you’re not otherwise the artistic type. This is really a form of self-care.
5. You get to buy fun supplies. I listed some of my favorites above, but I cannot tell you how much fun it is to justify buying sets of colorful pens or stickers that resemble real flowers. If you enjoy shopping, decorating your planner provides almost endless possibilities to purchase some great supplies.
6. You can support worthy small businesses. Like the shops listed in the resources roundup posts I mentioned earlier in this article, you have the option to support small businesses that resonate with your personal philosophy. Whether it’s washi tape, sticker kits, or just sticker collections, there are many responsible businesses that can use this sort of support. And, they tend to create really beautiful and unique products.
7. You can get involved in the planner community. How do you get involved? By posting pictures of your pages and liking/commenting on pictures posted by other planner fans. Instagram and Pinterest are my favorite places to post and share photos of my planner pages. I’m not the best at decorating but it’s nice to hear from folks that they enjoy the spreads I’ve created. There are also Facebook groups that are also devoted to this hobby.
8. Show your support for important events and causes. I have learned that I can support causes I believe in- such as those touching on race equity or LGBTQ+ rights- simply by creating a planner page and sharing it online (see the rainbow/pride themed spread I created above). Throw in a few hashtags and you’re helping to raise awareness for the things you believe in.
9. Use the pages for memory keeping. Because I was listing doctor’s appointments and the like in my old, At-A-Glance planners, I tended to hold on to them. But, they now sit it a cabinet where I don’t have to look at them. A pretty planner with decorative pages is one you will enjoy opening up and perusing like an old scrapbook.
10. It makes you use your planner more intentionally. When I create a planner spread, I’m not just throwing stickers on it haphazardly. I make sure that the space I’ve left for myself to write in is enough to handle all of the things I need to get done that week. I also find that going through my set of word stickers will trigger me to remember tasks and obligations I might have forgotten I needed to get done that week. For me, it’s still about functional planning.

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Today, I am able to write this hobby blog, work my two jobs, mentor students, and maintain my family responsibilities thanks to the combination of planners that I use. And, making sure that my planners are pretty to look at is a big reason why I am always using them.

I hope this article is helpful to anyone who is curious about what all this planner decorating is all about. Putting the fun in functional is the name of the game when it comes to planning.

Are you a decorative planner? What are your favorite supplies? Any tips you can share? Leave a comment below.

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** Graphics created with Canva; remaining images are original photos by Vidalia Patterson. To view additional planner spreads, check out @planonthesunrise on Instagram. All rights reserved.

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