BUJO - One Week In

Happy Sunday! It's such a beautiful frosty morning outside today. I've been snuggled up indoors but loving looking at the white trees and sparkly spider webs. Perhaps we'll get out for a stroll later today.

I wanted to come onto the blog today just to come and share one of my new ventures into the Bullet Journal world. Through lockdown last year I would sit down on a Sunday and write in a notebook my plans for the week. This included any work I needed to do, Zoom meetings (which I know we are all SO fond of...), jobs around the house and our meals for the week. This especially helped to keep some sense of structure while I spent a lot of time at home.

For Christmas I received a typo journal which had dots instead of lines, and it was this that inspired me to get creative in moving from a simple book of lists to making spreads and adding titles and a splash more creativity to it. I spent time the week after Christmas interesting ideas and writing the sort of thing I might like to include inside my BUJO. What was most important of all is that it became a book to help, not hinder. I didn't want to feel pressure, which we can so often do by looking at other people's ideas. So often I get a new notebook and I find it hard to start writing inside because it's just so beautiful without any of my scribbles! So I planned what I wanted to do and gave myself some time to get started.

The book starts with a spread of the year so I can see dates at a glance. Right now there's not a lot written down because who knows what the rest of the year might bring! I've highlighted where all the school holidays are though so I can see that quickly and clearly.

I've then made a page to keep track of my friends' and families' birthdays, something I've wanted to have a disunited space for for a while! This is the page where I made my first mistakes... and I'm glad I've made them now because there's less pressure for the rest of the book! I actually wrote my sisters birthday down in February, when it's actually in March... oops. I think by this point I'd got a little tired! I also wrote my friends's birthday in November in the November box. Instead of writing her name I wrote November - LOL. That was a sign I needed to put it down and carry on another day. I just wanted to share that I'd made those mistakes to highlight that it really doesn't matter and not everything you see on social media is perfect!

As I've shared on previous blog posts, I'm someone who finds motivation in the near year and I enjoy making New Years goals or resolutions, without having huge pressure on myself if they don't go to plan. So on my next couple of pages I made a Bin-goal board, with things I'd like to do by the end of the year. There's lots of space for me to add new ideas though the year too which I like.

I've also made a page for writing down books that I'd like to read this year and I can colour them in once I've read them. I may have been a bit optimistic with the amount of books I've drawn... but it looks good so I went with it!

Then we come to the pages I'll use most often. I've made a January spread so I can see dates in January at a glance... again, there's not a lot written down yet!! I've then written the weekly spreads down for January, where I can keep track of those things I mentioned before, jobs at home and our meal plan etc. It's satisfying being able to tick bits off as we go through the week!

SO. How am I finding it. I really enjoyed having time after Christmas to set my spreads out and have a think about how I want to use it day to day. It's helped having more of a structure to the week knowing what I want to get done each day. I'm going to make sure I have time each Sunday to sit down and look ahead at the week to come, making sure there's time to rest in each day too.

Perhaps I'll do another post in a couple of months to see what I've changed, to see if there's things that haven't worked so well or things that I've introduced.

I hope this is helpful for you if the BUJO world is something you're new to like me or have been doing for years!

Have a good week,

Emily xx