Homemade diaries for the Mulberry(s)

Central to my planning system (which really hasn’t changed since here), is the combination of a week on two pages diary (for an overview of the week) and a day per page diary (for more detailed planning).

In Red, I have the glorious Mulberry week on two pages diary (thank you again Gerard!) in combination with a week of homemade day per page (DPP) inserts. Why homemade? Well, because Mulberry don’t do a day per page insert and no other size fits a Mulberry, that’s why. Since I was designing my own (using a word document of my own and a mail merge with one of the excel spreadsheets that Steve from Philofaxy and Ray from My Life all in One Place created), I could set them up exactly how I wanted, and print them out at home. The page size in Red is A6. Now, I’m not that smart at making my printer print the correct diary pages back to back if I start with an A4 file and print 4 to a page, so I designed my diary on A6 to start with. Making A6 paper is easy: just cut an A4 piece into quarters.

I had used Filofax DPP last year, in combination with the week on two pages, but as I was working on the design, I realised I could do more than just make a lined DPP with the correct date at the top. I could add things I wanted to log each day too!

Hence, my design has a space across the top to note important things (birthdays etc), timed slots down the left-hand side (for appointments and time-boxing) and then logging and task-list space on the right-hand side. As I have made the word file myself (and as I tend to only print a few weeks of the diary at a time), I can add in other things I want to log if I want, then re-do the mail merge.

The picture below shows the A6 version on the right and a pocket version on the left (with a pocket Today marker to give you an idea of the page size difference).

Pocket size on left; A6 size on right

Why is there also a pocket version??

Ah, because Loki arrived and suddenly, Red feels huge! Gorgeous, but huge. Again, I’m not smart enough to do the print back to back for pocket-size paper on my printer, and anyway, I can cut an A4 sheet into 5 pocket-size pages. So again, using the same excel base file and a new word file, I made my own pocket DPP and printed onto pre-cut paper.

Obviously, there were some changes that needed making as the pocket size is smaller. I changed the time slots from half-hour to hourly, but kept the things I wanted to log. In fact, I have more to-do spaces in the pocket, but I need to write smaller in them!

I am slowly working towards replicating all the pages in Loki that were there in Red (but I may need to sacrifice a few months of week on two pages to fit it all in, since Loki has small rings). Maybe this time next week I will have moved in?

I’ll keep you posted!