Do you use a planner? Is your planner specific to only your day to day appointments or is it a planner that helps you plan your whole life. I am currently on the search for the perfect planner that can help me juggle everything, gardening, homesteading, homemaking, and so many more things. Today we are going to dive it to what that perfect planner might look like. Let's get Growing!

As a homesteader, gardener, and homemaker having a planner that can help you plan and keep track of everything would be perfect, wouldn’t it? Having one place to keep track of your schedule, your daily tasks, and even your goals would be priceless right. Today you and I are going to talk about the step you should take to find that perfect planner for you and your family. You and I are different but if I share with you how I would go about finding the perfect planner then you should be able to follow the same steps too. So let’s get started!

What Problem Do You Want It To Solve

This should be the first thing you ask yourself. You have determined that having a planner will help you. But why is it going to help you? What are you hoping this planner is going to fix?

Are you wanting your new planner to help you be more organized? Well, then what specifically are you wanting to organize?

Now the next question is what do you think that organization is going to look like? Is it going to be set out to-do lists or is it going to be just spots to brain dump everything?

Now is the time to answer these questions before you even look or search for a planner on Amazon. There are so many planners out there and you need to first decide what you think you need before you get distracted in the sea of planners online.

The problem I would personally want my new planner to solve would be that it would be the one place I can find everything. I want it to have everything I do, I deal with, all in one place. I don’t want to have multiple planners for my garden, my homestead, and my home anymore. I want to combine them all.

Who Is It For

The next step would be to look at your planner as one that you were going to design. Because when you look at it from that perspective you can step back and ask yourself who is it that I would be designing this for? What parts would this person like in her planner? You are whom God made and you are like no one else on earth. You do not fit into a cookie-cutter mold and neither should your planner.

So describe yourself, write down your weaknesses, your strengths, your needs, your wants. And then from their figure out the transformation you want. Because with every problem there is a solution. And the transformation you are craving from your planner is the solution you are hoping it will give you.

For example, if I were to describe myself. I would say that I am a busy mom, a homesteader, gardener, housekeeper, cook, and the list could go on and on. And the transformation I want my planner to give me is that every day, I move forward one step at a time to my goal of growing a healthy family. A family that has a connection with God, that is served healthy food at every meal, that works together to grow that food and a family that loves spending time together.

So who are you and what kind of transformation do you want for yourself and your family?

And remember a mountain is best climbed one step at a time!

A Planner For A Healthy Family

Now that you have the first steps figured out.

You know what problem you would like your new planner to solve.

You know whom this planner needs to be for.

You know what transformation you want your new planner to give you.

You are now ready to search for a new planner.

But I want to take things a little bit further. I want to describe for you what I think a planner for growing a healthy family might look like. Most planners are divided up into two parts. You have the part with the section where you find pages that help you organize different aspects of your life. And the second part would be where the planner lays out your day-to-day or week-to-week schedule. So let’s go through the different parts that should be in your planner for growing a healthy family.

Planner Sections

Growing a healthy family could be broken up into about four different sections. As I said before a healthy family is a family that has a connection with God, that is served healthy food at every meal, that works together to grow that food and a family that loves spending time together.

Because growing a connection with God is more of a daily practice I am going to wait to describe that part below. But let’s look at the other three parts.

The cornerstone of a healthy family is setting goals. Growing food and spending time together takes planning and fortitude and without setting goals it is very hard to accomplish from day-to-day. In this section, you would want a place to write down your big yearly goals. Like a family vacation or maybe a big project. And maybe a part that can help break those big goals into smaller sections.

The next section you would need is a place to keep track of all the good food you have grown and stored. A place to keep an inventory of all the jars of beans you have downstairs or all the different cuts of beef you have in the freeze. And of course, part of this section would be a place to write out your monthly menu so have a plan to use up all of that good food you have worked so hard to grow. And with growing and preserving food, you need to remember to plan for beyond the harvest. You are going to need a place to keep that list of new recipes you found so you can use them in your menu.

The third and fourth sections would need to of course be all about how you plan to grow more of that good food. Like maybe a gardening section where you can write out your garden plan and a place to keep track of your harvest and gardening tasks. And maybe a homesteading section where you can keep track of when your new chicks will be coming in or when you trimmed your goats last.

The fifth section would be house sections. A family lives and grows in a home and it is important to keep it clean. I don’t like to clean but having a plan for what needs to be cleaned daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly will help you get everything done.

And in each of these sections a budget section. Growing a healthy family is going to need money so keeping track of how you spend your money or even how you plan to save money for one of your big goals is going to be so helpful.

Weekly Schedule

The second part of a planner is the weekly schedule layout. This layout usually includes the days listed out with space for appointments and daily tasks. But a planner for a healthy family is going to need more than that.

I told you we were going to get back to how a healthy family has a connection to God, right. The best way for your family to have a connection with God is for you to have one first. When you build a relationship with God, your children and husband will see that relationship reflected in you. And in turn, as you build that relationship, you will want to share it with them. So this weekly layout should have a place for a daily devotional or a place for you to write down a verse that you might want to share with your family.

You are also going to want a place that you can write down your weekly goals. The first part of the planner is where you write down all of your big family goals and maybe even break them apart into littler goals. But this weekly section would be where you could break those goals down even further. So that every week you can be doing something to help you and your family accomplish your big goals.

And of course, you cook the food you grow so you need a spot on the weekly layout to put your menu. I know from experience having this planned out for me every day helps me get a good healthy meal on the table every night.

Next, the weekly layout should have a place for journaling. A place to write down things that are important to you that happened through the week or to write down your thoughts. I try to do a brain dump once a week where I write down all the thoughts and ideas that keep running through my head.

Another section would be where you can keep track of your habits or what habits you want to develop. Like drinking enough water every day or doing the dishes. I had to make this one of my habits for about three months because I was so awful at procrastinating about getting them done every day. I didn’t like doing dishes. So I trained myself to enjoy it by only allowing myself to listen to my favorite podcast while I was doing dishes. And then once I constantly washed a load of dishes every day for a week I would reward myself with a piece of chocolate out of my secret dark chocolate stash. (Don’t tell my boys) Building habits is a very helpful tool for yourself as well as your children.

Conclusion

To recap when you go looking for a new planner. Ask yourself these three things:

What is the Problem I want to solve?

Who is this planner For?

What is the Transformation I want?

And when you are looking for a planner that can help you grow a healthy family try to find one that has two parts. One that helps you organize different aspects of your life like:

A homemaking section with a place for an inventory, a menu, and a cleaning schedule of some sort. Oh and also a place for you to plan for beyond the harvest.

A Gardening section where you can layout your garden plan and daily or weekly garden tasks

A Homesteading section where you can write down important animal information

A Goal setting section where you and your family can decide on a few big goals you hope to accomplish this year.

And remember each of these sections should have a place for making a budget!

The second part of your planner should include things like:

A weekly goal section

A devotional sections

A menu sections

A journaling section

A habit section

A place to write appointments of course.

I hope this has helped you find that perfect planner.

Have a blessed day,

Crystal