What are the best planners for moms this year?
I often wonder how I ever made it to any meeting on time. Before I had a family of my own, I was notorious for packing my schedule with social events, volunteer activities, and a mirage of pampering appointments, and I made it to every last one without much more than a post-it note on my bathroom mirror. As a mom, it seems that I’m lucky if I make it to the bathroom on time!
Motherhood has taught me several valuable lessons, but one of the biggest is I should LIVE by my planner! But with so many choices, and trust me, I’ve tried them all, how do you know which ones are the best planners for moms.
We are required to know the intricacies of everyone’s schedules and the locations of all missing items! I’ve yet to find a planner that also finds lost things, but when I do you all will be the first to know!
This list of planners and organizers for moms was created from my incessant need to find the best way to stay organized. Over the course of life, I have tried bullet journaling (took a lot of time to make it pretty), Happy plannering (I’m a little cheap), post-it note sticking (worked until my baby started throwing them away) and eventually found a few products (trello and our printable planner) that have helped me to stay on top of all appointments that being a working mama entrepreneur requires.
These all rate highly amongst busy working moms (isn’t that all of us) and are sure to be top competitors amongst the all 2020-2021 planners.
This post may contain affiliate links. You can read our entire affiliate disclosure here.
Finding the best planner for you
Choosing a planner can be an overwhelming task. Simply walking the planner aisle at Michaels or Target is an all-day affair. With different shapes and sizes, as well as planners focused on tracking different types of goals, it may feel like its easier to just stick to memory, but by asking yourself a few questions you can narrow down the perfect planner for you and your lifestyle.
Will I want to carry my planner everywhere? The answer to this question will help you determine how large or thick of a planner you should select. In 2018 I bought this beautiful 18 month spiral planner, and I have used it for a grand total of 3 months. While I love everything in it, the planner is too thick for me to carry around everywhere so I haven’t been able to use it fully.
Will I be the only one using the planner? The answer to this question will help you determine if you should use a digital planner or productivity app that the entire family can access. When both my husband and I had Iphones we would often calendar
How detailed do I want to organize my schedule? Answering this question will help you determine if you should be using a daily, weekly, or monthly planner. When I bought the large planner I mentioned earlier, I LOVED the fact that it broke everything down in month, week, and days, however, the only pages I actually used were the months and the days.
What additional items do I want to track? This is where you get to have fun with your planner! What other items or activities do you want to track with your planner? Maybe you are ready to start a fitness plan, or you are interested in tracking your self-care. There are planners that help you organize your goals and planners that help you journal your year! Choosing one or two additional items to add to your planner can help you build a new habit or stay on track with using your planner.
Answering these questions will not only help you to determine what you need to have in your planner, but can also help you to remain focused in your selection. This means that while the planner with the daily fitness plan included may be beautiful, if this was not something you listed as a must have in your planner decision planning, then you can opt for one that doesn’t have these additional features and instead includes all that you need to .
While it is nice to have the extra features, there are times when those features can be distracting or discouraging. You have to know yourself well to understand if it is something that you can deal with.
The following planners are all top rated and mom approved! I’ve chosen the top two planners in the following 4 different categories:
- Best Undated Planners
- Best Daily Planners
- Best Weekly Planners
- Best Planner Apps
Best undated planners for moms
If you love the idea of a planner but have a hard time committing to consistency (you can be a work in progress) then trying one of these undated planners for moms may be the best place to start!
1. Panda Undated
For as long as I can remember, planner people have been talking about the Panda Planner, so you can imagine my excitement when my then fiancé bought two of them for us to try. Neither of us were particularly organized, and blending two households meant that things were soon to become much more busy.
The panda planner does not disappoint! It is an undated planner to, this takes the pressure off to use it daily (because lets be honest, us non-planner people WANT to plan, but we aren’t always consistent, especially in the beginning). It offers several different spreads so that whatever layout you like, be it a weekly overview or a daily detailed plan, its available.
One of the features that many reviewers rave about is the ability to practice mindful gratitude and celebration of successes. By reviewing the days, weeks, months prior, you are able to see where you are in your planning, and how productive you are able to be!
2. Best Self Journal
You know how sometimes you have a planner for 3 years and you’ve only gotten through the first month? Just me? Well the Self Planner from BestSelf Co. is the answer to this time proven issue. By focusing its design on helping you press into the big picture, the Self Planner helps unorganized moms and busy people in general master their most valuable resource – time.
This undated 6 month planner encourages productivity and efficiency through its scientifically created design. The key to this is in the 30-minute timeline that helps you assign time blocks to activities instead of lists so that you can make the most of every moment.
I personally love the fact that this planner also includes space to see where you are winning and areas in your life where improvements can be made.
Best daily planners for moms
To-do list lovers everywhere can sometimes feel stifled by the lack of space included in weekly spreads. These daily 2020-2021 planners allow you ample space to create the perfect day.
1. Plan the Day Printable Self-Care Planner
Mom’s have a LOT of things on their plates and in many cases they put those needs before their own, often neglecting their peace and sanity for their families. The Plan the day Self-care planner tries to be the remedy to this common mom habit.
This quarterly planner includes two-page monthly spreads, a meal planner, self-care check-list as well as daily spreads that allow moms to plan their todo lists as well as take a moment to practice gratitude and notate memorable thoughts in their day.
This best planner for moms pick encourages you to be intentional with your self-care and purposeful in carving out time for reflection, through the gentle nudge of planning it.
2. Erin Condren Life Planner
As I have learned how to be an organized planner, I have found a few things that are MUST HAVEs when it comes to the planners I use. A daily spread is one of them. This however also means that I end up with very bulky planners! That is until I found this beauty from Erin Condren.
The Life Planner Duo product from this planner giant is definitely a must have for any mom who really likes having a daily plan like myself. Instead of creating a single huge planner, this genius design is one planner broken into two 6-month books.
The win with this is you don’t have to worry about lugging around a super thick planner, you also get to feel like you are starting over again when July hits and its time to start your second half.
One slight downfall is its a dated calendar and that can be confining for those who maybe aren’t consistent.
Best weekly planners for moms
Weekly 2021-2022 planners allow moms to see the week as a whole. These weekly planners offer moms a way to organize the busy schedules of everyone in the household as well as take a moment to set and achieve personal goals.
1. 2021 Signature Ashley Shelly Planner
I LOVE small businesses and maybe I am a bit biased but these planners from a fellow Ashley are just the best! The gorgeous Signature Planners come come in a range of colors. Ashley runs a one woman shop and her product is just beautiful! She has taken care of all of the details that you would expect from a super high end and big company, but you get the benefit of one on one customer service that is so important with small businesses.
There are so many details that I love about the Ashley Shelly planners, from the tabs to the indexing corners feature so I never lose my page. I use both the signature planner and the petite planner in my planning process and would recommend both to help you create your best days!
2. Blue Sky Day Designer
So, it took a long time for me to face it, but life as a mom does revolve around the academic year! UGH! With that being said, it is nice to have a planner that also sets itself up with the school year in mind. The Day Designer from Blue Sky does just that!
This is another planner that starts with the big picture first. It was designed with the goal of creating days that are made for productivity. This planner offers moms the ability to design a day that allows them to check off all the desired tasks easily and efficiently.
Keep all of your kids many projects, clubs, and organization meetings organized with the weekly spreads with ample lined room for notations. The day designer also allows for easy prioritization and goal setting with the big picture goal planning spreads.
3. Clever Fox Planner
Achieving goals and accountability. These are the most talked about benefits that you can expect from the Clever Fox Planner. For the mom who is doing a little bit of everything, all the time, this planner just may be the schedule saving tool that you have been looking for.
The Clever Fox Planner is an undated planner that is set up in a way that encourages the user to set goals and actionable steps to reach the goal.
Using the planner is made simple with an easy to follow quick start guide that walks you through life vision planning and then setting small goals to incorporate into your monthly, weekly, and daily schedule.
This all in one planner is great for moms to be able to incorporate not only scheduled activities but also slow down and add time for gratitude into your day.
It comes in a variety of colors, and as an added bonus, the company includes stickers as well as dot-grid pages for any additional spreads you may desire.
Best planner apps for moms
On the go moms typically always have one thing on them, and that is their cell phone! These apps make it easy to quickly access your plans for the day and to get stuff done!
1. Todoist
I wasn’t a believer. I was a loyalist and didn’t want to learn anything knew, and then I slipped. Todoist speaks to my post-it note, to do list heart. It is everything that I could have wanted in a bullet journal but didn’t have the stick-to-it to continue.
Todoist is the working mom’s dream app!
Here’s the short of it. You create a to do list, and then you create actionable lists to that to-do list. You can add contributors and comments and notes and all the nice things to that to do list, and It’s all on your phone.
The creators of Todoist didn’t stop there, they have also created templates that you can use to create your perfect Todoist, to do lists!
Are you feeling my excitement? Best of all, you can use many of the features for free!
2. Trello
I am not a project manager, just a mom pulled in a ton of directions, so basically a project manager by default, and I LOVE trello!
Now I will admit when I first started using trello, I was confused. Its sort of like a blank canvas, an empty journal, similar to those that the bullet journal users, use. This is both a negative to non-creatives and a DREAM for those who just take the time to figure it out! I love that I can easily create boards, for the different projects I work on and set dates, times, checklists. All of it in one place.
What is also nice is it connects on multiple different platforms, so I can see projects on my computer or my phone easily and continue working on it. Another plus of Trello is you can set these projects up and share them with family members. So that shopping list that your husband inevitably forgets on the counter isn’t an issue with trello. Simply add to a family board and proceed.
Another cool feature of trello is you can add power-ups to your boards to see the tasks in different views (like using calendar view to get an overview of your to-do list.)
Are planners worth it?
There are tons of options when it comes to the world of planners, and for many moms there isn’t a single planner that works all around. In as much as our families are different, we as planning moms have different needs and requirements. With that being said, a planner can be the difference between an enjoyable week and a week that started going down the hole from the alarm clock ringing on Monday morning.
With everything that we are expected to remember (and it’s a LOT) why not have a companion item that can bare some of the weight of the mental load!
A planner can be that help in a trying time!
Do you have a planner that you LOVE that you want to share?
I’d love to check it out! Comment below or contact me here!
Happy Planning!