Dear FlyLady,
I have a confession… I’m a calendar-freak. I have a love-hate relationship with my calendar.
They can’t stay blank or they’re less than a tool, and not enough to be a decoration. So I write my appointments, birthdays, reminders and so forth down, and the calendar gets uglier and uglier as each day and month go by with barely-readable scrawl — often in pencil in case I needed to “change” something. The fuller it gets, the more I start to hate my calendar. But I’ve been reading all you have had to say about using calendars, and I finally figured that, of course, you are right. They need to be used and useful, but also a joy to use.
No more tiny squares for me. I finally purchased my lined calendar with two-pages of large squares for each month, that I could see across the room. There’s plenty of room to write. I bought one of those multi-color Bic pens with red, green, blue and black ink and have given it a place of honor at the end of a string tied conveniently next to my calendar where it will not be able to walk away. I’ve decided which color ink will be used for which kind of event (like birthdays, appointments, reminders and so forth).
But I still have that strange fascination for wanting my calendar to be an extension of me…. I wanted it to be fun to use. So I ordered the FlyLady stickers , which are such a nice size. There are many stickers I will use, some I will not (the kids will enjoy plastering the extras on themselves!), but I noticed the one regular reminder sticker I needed was not part of the FlyLady package. I give my pets their pet-meds on a regular basis and I really wanted a sticker for that … it would be a more visual reminder for me than black ink alone. So the next time I made it to the teacher supply store I picked up a pack of animal stickers of *just the right size* that contained dog and cat stickers among others.
I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to have a system for my new calendar. Yes, it will still fill up, like each year’s before. But this time there will be some method, some organization, some personalization that didn’t exist before. It will be a pleasure to fill the squares in a routine manner, much the same way I have a routine for my morning, my home-blessing, my menu-planning and so forth.
Thank you for the routines! Thank you for the inspiration to personalize my routines to suit myself! Thank you for giving us wings!
FlyBaby in NW Ohio
FlyLady here: The 2016 FlyLady Calendars are in the FlyShop now! Please don’t allow your perfectionism to stand in the way of using your calendar! One of the ways I get rid of my perfectionism is to use address labels. I color code them with hi-lighters. I write on them and place them on the calendar. I also keep my calendar in my bathroom. It is where I end my day and start my day!
