Must Have Lists To Include In Your Planner Or Bullet Journal To Organize Your Entire Life.
Today I will be talking all about LISTS. Whether or not you are using a paper planner, bullet journal or just a plain old notebook, these are must have lists to keep in order to get your life organized. Most planners these days will come with a ton of note pages. Another great option you could use is a disc bound type planner or notebook, for example The Happy Planner.
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Basically, the point I’m trying to make is that it doesn’t matter what type of system you are using, these lists will work for any kind of planner or notebook. If you are not using a paper planner or bullet journal yet, I highly suggest that you get yourself one of the above options.
If you are looking for a good planner, with great paper quality, The Erin Condren Life Planner is my all time favorite paper planner. The Erin Condren comes in 3 different layout options and your choice of colorful or neutral pages. The best part is, if you are overly creative such as myself and like to use heavy felt tip pens or markers, these pages will not shadow or bleed.
Must Have Lists To Include In Your Planner Or Notebook To Organize Your Entire Life.
Daily Cleaning
Making a daily cleaning list is a excellent idea to get yourself motivated. More so doing daily chores will help to maintain your home much easier.
Weekly Cleaning
Just like a daily cleaning list, I highly suggest you break up the areas within your home and create a weekly cleaning list. Think of areas in your home that get dirty fast, such as your bathrooms and floors. Assign one day a week for each task that needs attention, you will be pleased with the results.
Monthly Cleaning
Similar to the daily and weekly cleaning, monthly cleaning lists are great to have on hand for things that only need to be done periodically. You can include tasks like cleaning out your fridge and pantry.
Daily Routine
Your daily routine isn’t necessarily the same, although similar to a daily or weekly cleaning routine. This is a list of how you want your day to go, every single day. Make sure to include things such as making time to plan out your day, waking up earlier or maybe morning pages. Schedule out time for your cleaning, kids activities, homework, dinner, baths and so on. Having a daily routine in place will make you so much more productive.
Morning Routine
A morning routine is something you really need to establish in order to be on top of your game, especially if you run a blog or are building a business or side hustle. That may be your only time to get these tasks done whether you work in or out of the home.
Some examples for your morning routine: waking up earlier, taking time out for yourself to work on a blog, plan or craft, exercise, yoga, writing and so on. By doing these things early off, it recharges you for the day. The best part about waking early, you are way more energized throughout the day.
I do try really, really hard to wake up early, all though I struggle with night owl tendencies. I like to call my morning routine “my ideal morning routine” because most of the time I sleep through my alarms.
Evening Routine
Having a evening routine in place is a great practice to start. They say the evening hours are essential for having a great morning. Write down what you need for the morning and what you need to do to prepare for bed. Such as, laying out clothes for yourself or your kids, making sure your kids have underwear and socks for school. I know that struggle all too well.
Baths, tidy up, load and run the dishwasher. Waking up to a clean home will make you feel so much at ease. The best takeaway, your mornings won’t be so hectic. And if you have never checked out Fly Lady, she always says get dressed to shoes no matter if your inside all day or not. Her site has some amazing reasons.
Spring Cleaning
A spring cleaning list is a great list to make to give your home that clean feeling when you are going from winter into spring. A spring cleaning list usually consists of deep cleaning and dusting that needs to be done around your home. Things such as mopping your walls, wiping down doors, cleaning out kitchen cabinets and drawers and dusting blinds are great tasks to add to a spring cleaning list.
Master To Do
A master to-do list is basically you breaking your home up into rooms, then breaking the rooms up into chunks of cleaning tasks to add to your daily and weekly routines. You can go back and refer to this list as your making your daily, weekly and monthly cleaning lists.
Decluttering List
If you want to get your home organized, you have to start by decluttering and purging everything not in use. This will take a while but I suggest that you go at your own pace. It’s better to start off slowly then not start at all.
Organization List
After the decluttering and purging phase you are going to want to organize the things that are left. My greatest advice is to make sure there is a place for everything. If your on a strict budget, the dollar store has fantastic finds when it comes to bins and jars.
Brain Dump
A brain dump is basically everything cluttering up your mind. This isn’t a neatly organized list this is more like jotting down everything in your head to get it out onto paper. This is a great practice to do daily especially is you have anxiety, depression, ocd or adhd.
Having a area to just write your thoughts, to-dos, feelings, moods or things you want to get to whether it’s soon or far in the future, is a great stress relief. Most importantly, keeping a brain dump helps to relieve anxiety and stress. Try to make this a daily practice!
Done List
I highly suggest a done list. A done list is similar to a to-do list but reversed. You write down daily the tasks you had completed and can reference back to this list as needed.
Home Maintenance List
Keeping a running home maintenance list is a great idea. This is for anything that needs attention within you Home such as painting, repairs, changing batteries in smoke detectors and buying or repurposing furniture. You could even add the names/brand of paint colors per room so you know the color of the paint used if you ever need to retouch.
Pantry Inventory
If you shop in bulk or not having a pantry inventory can be a great list to see when you purchased said item and when your running low. This isn’t a list for everyone, I know I saw many make these lists.
Meal Planning
Planning our your meals for the week is a great idea. Not only can you make sure you buy all the ingredients at once before the week starts, it saves you from running to the grocery store frequently for things needed to cook dinner.
Lunch Box Ideas
If you have children who bring lunch to school, this is a great list to keep. My two older boys buy lunch, my pre-k son eats lunch everyday in school whether it’s a half day or full school day. You can reference this list often to make sure you are giving your kids a variety of different lunches.
Dinner Ideas
I have never made a dinner idea list, Im definitely going to make one. I know have mom brain on top of ADHD and Anxiety, I tend to forget so many meals my family enjoys. You can get your kids involved by asking them their 3 favorite meals each. I really love this idea.
Recipes
This list is pretty much self explanatory, all you do is write down recipes for dishes or desserts you make often, or ideas for dishes you’d like to make.
Grocery Shopping List
Ive made this list and it’s helped me to remember things I may not of. I suggest, if using a notebook or bullet journal make it a two page side by side list to include everything by category. Then when you go grocery shopping, reference this when making your list.
Contacts
This is a great list for planner friends, friends and family. Making a contact list with name, phone number, address and email is a great tool even for birthday party invitations and Christmas cards.
Website Passwords
Most of the time, all my passwords are stored in my iphone but what if your phone is lost. This is a great list for anyone who visits a lot of websites or if you have a blog and/or YouTube channel. Most likely you are active on social media amongst all the websites and apps you visit to create graphics and run your business.
Birthdays and Anniversaries
If you have a big family then most likely you have a whole lot of birthdays and anniversaries to remember. This is a super simple list to create that takes little effort. All you do is write the name and day of birthday or anniversary, that’s it…. Super Simple.
Birthday Present Ideas
This list is another great list to keep close by. Whether it’s for your kids, nieces and nephews, siblings, parents, friends or spouse. Keeping a running birthday gift idea guide is a great idea.
Packing Lists
If you have a upcoming trip or say you go away with the family every summer, keeping a packing list is a great time saver. Especially if you have multiple kids such as I, it can save your sanity. Or say it’s for an upcoming trip such as GO WILD, I’m GOing… are you?. Trying to be prepared ahead of time will save you a whole lot of last minute panic. Maybe even preventing you from forgetting something super important once your already there.
Spending Tracker
Being implosive, such as myself, I’m not keen on the spending tracker list. All though I really should start using one. This is a great list to make to not just track your spending, but to keep track of any online orders you may be waiting on.
Budgeting
Just like the spending tracker, I struggle to budget. But having a budget is a great tool to add to your planner and/or bullet journal. If you want to check out some amazing tips, I highly suggest you join Jen Plans Budgeting Facebook Group. She’s absolutely amazing at teaching how to set up a budget and has helped so many others in the planner community get their finances in order.
Favorite Quotes
This is a list I’m definitely going to start incorporating into my Erin Condren Life Planner. I love inspirational quotes, who doesn’t. This is a great way to write down quotes as you come across them to reference back to as needed.
Favorite Tv Shows
Another list that can be as plain or as artistic as you like it to be. I’ve saw little TVs doodled with the TV show inside, or it can be a plain old running list. Make sure to include all your favorite series from cable, Netflix, Hulu and so on.
Books To Read
This could be paper, kindle or even audio books, books that are about to be released, through word of mouth or books your just interested in reading. This is a great list for any of that. I myself am a huge fan of Audible through Amazon.
Audible is a monthly subscription based service that gives you so many credits per month based on the plan you choose. Each audio book is only 1 credit and you can find any and every book through Audible.
The best part about Audible, you have a whole year per book title return policy. Say you buy a book with one of your credits, you start listening to that book and it’s not exactly what you had expected. I can’t tell you how many times the sample sounded amazing to just be disappointed with the book in general.
You can go under your account and return that book title and receive your credit back, INSTANTLY. Where else can you do that.
Books Read
This is another list that can be a really fun and artistic list to make. Check Instagram or even Pinterest for inspiration on book list ideas for a Bullet Journal. Again, you can make this list as plain or artistic as you please. There are so many bullet journal book reading challenges for list making also if you are into that. Search under the hashtag section on Instagram to find challenges or to even just to look for some inspiration.
Favorite Song Lyrics
If you are anything like me, song lyrics most of the time mean something to you or they will relate with something going on within yourself. What I have done is write down the song title, artist and the lyrics that stood out to me. I absolutely love keeping a list like this.
Blog Post Ideas
I have this list running in my current planner and it’s a super useful tool for when you have writers block or can’t think of what to write about. Anything something comes to mind, whether or not you think you would write about it, write it down.
YouTube Video Ideas
Similar to the blog post ideas, if you have a YouTube channel this list is a must keep. Again you can reference back to this list when thinking of ideas to record about.
Podcasts To Listen To Or Favorite Podcasts
Who doesn’t love a good podcast. You can find podcasts on anything imaginable from true crime, book lovers and even planning. I love this list because it helps me remember the podcasts I love, especially when I’m low on space with my iPhone and need to delete data.
Blogs You Love To Read
This is a list I yet to make but I’m going to make this list ASAP. There are so many blogs I love to read and tend to forget so many great ones. Making a blogs you love list is a great tool to remember all your favorite bloggers. More so you can include certain articles that touch your heart.
Bucket List
I like to use a running bucket list for anything I want to try from courses online, paper planner, notebooks for bullet journaling as well as things I need to advance my business. But a bucket list can be about anything you deserve from travel, where you like to see yourself in the next years and goals for the year.
Wrapping Up.
It really doesn’t matter whether you are using a planner, bullet journal or plain old notebook, I highly suggest you start making different types of lists in order to get yourself and life finally organized.
Another thing you could incorporate into your list making is highlighters, my top two favorites I use all the time are Mildliners and Stabilo Boss Highlighters.
You could even incorporate stamping using Clear Stamps Into your list making.
Stamping is my favorite thing to do in order to destress. I love coloring in my stamps with copic alcohol markers, that’s why I like to use a mix of functional, lettering and happy girl stamps, the happy girls are great for coloring.
My favorite shop for clear stamps is Love Cynthia. Love Cynthia has the cutest “happy girl” stamps. Best thing is that they are super durable.
If you are interested in learning how to stamp, check out my blog post on How To Stamp. There you will find all the resources needed on how to start stamping, supplies needed to stamp, stamp care, and how to color in your stamp image with Copic Markers.
If you have any questions or comments, make sure to leave them in the comment section below. I love to chat with my readers.