As a busy mom, keeping track of your kids’ schedules along with yours and your significant other’s schedule can be hectic. When it comes to finding the right planner for your family’s busy lives, there are several great options. We present 8 planners for busy moms to help keep you on schedule.
Some are great for schedule keeping as well as keeping track of notes and lists, others are mainly used as a calendar to keep school activities and work schedules updated.
Regardless of whether you are looking for a physical paper planner or you are more interested in a digital alternative, there are a ton of options for you to choose from. From bullet journals to calendar apps, let’s take a look at some of the best planners that you can choose from.
8 Planners for Busy Moms – Our Picks
Bullet Journal – The Best Overall
If you are the type of person that prefers ink and paper to keep track of the goings-on of your day-to-day life, a bullet journal would be an excellent way for you to jot down your thoughts and ideas as well as keep notes on who has what activity each day.
Bullet journaling is a really popular method of journaling these days.
Some people use it as a way to stay organized and perform self-care, some people genuinely enjoy the process, and others are a fan of the aesthetic.
If you search online for bullet journal inspiration, you will find a ton of neat ideas you can take from and use in your own journal.
Moms in particular like this method if they have multiple kids under their care, consider themselves a “Hot Mess Mom” and find their purses are full of notes on random scraps of paper, or if they just like to stay organized and prefer jotting down their thoughts and ideas rather than relying on technology for that.
One of the biggest appeals to bullet journaling is that it can be a creative outlet, helping to reduce stress and increase your ability to focus.
Using nesting within your lists gives you more opportunities to add more fun and color to your journal. If you like to write notes on paper, use different colors in your planning, and want a creative outlet to escape the stresses of every day, bullet journaling would be a great choice for you.
A major draw of the Bullet Journal is that it not only promotes a healthier and more organized life through intentional living. There is a book component that gives you the basis for the intentional living philosophy, and there is the Bullet Journal that combines planning and journaling. There is also a companion app, which is extremely helpful these days.
The app allows you access to your entire Bullet Journal Library, so you can quickly access your Collection.
You can also access a Reflection Tracker, to help stay on top of your priorities. Be mindful of how you are spending your time and energy by using introspection to build healthy daily habits. The 72-hour Log helps you log your tasks, events, and notes, when you are away from your notebook, for 72 hours before it will need to be migrated to your notebook.
Moleskine – Best Classic Planner
For paper lovers, the planners from Moleskine are next-level awesome. They have a ton of options for you to choose from so you can have a truly personal journaling experience.
Everyone has preferences, and that’s true when it comes to everything from foods to types of vehicles to personal hygiene products.
Stationary lovers are no exception to this. Anybody that says they love pens and paper definitely has a go-to.
Not only do Moleskine’s planners come with a wide range of attractive decorative colors in various themes, but their planners also come in many different formats. You can choose notebooks that are hardcover or softcover, vertical or horizontal, and even really small and really big. No matter what way you prefer to journal, plan, and doodle, Moleskine has you covered.
Moleskine’s planners have many different accessories and features, depending on which style you go with.
Some themes include stickers and story cards, others just have the usual time zones, international measurements, and dialing codes. There are some design elements that many people love. Each book can lie completely flat when open at 180°, the corners rounded for comfort, and most have an elastic strap for security.
In addition to the pen and paper analog facet of Moleskine, they also have products that bridge the gap between analog and digital.
The smart pens and notebooks will allow you to not only take notes, journal entries, doodles, or anything else you could want to jot down, and it will create digital assets to match, so you can essentially digitize your notes as you make them, so you always have your paper copy and your digital record as well.
As you create content with your smartpen you can code it and organize it on the fly, so that when it translates digitally, it is already in the form you prefer. The ability to make a note, plan, record some contact info, or even jot down meeting notes or conference highlights, and be able to instantly upload them to your other digital devices, can be priceless in terms of time-saving and information retention.
The Moleskine+ is surprisingly affordable for a smart writing system. The pen and notebook can be obtained for less than you would think, and they offer a world of versatility.
Google Calendar – Best Paperless Planner
Are you looking for a way to keep the whole family’s schedule in a place that is both convenient and easy to use?
Google Calendar is a fantastic option.
Anyone with a Gmail account can use Google’s services, including their calendars. There are several reasons that this would be a great choice for busy families.
Google Calendar is a wonderful choice for families, especially if you have older kids that have cell phones and lives of their own.
One of the best parts of this app is that everyone can maintain their personal schedule on their own device and share the info with the family so everyone stays in the loop and knows what everyone will be doing. This comes in handy for families with teens that are always on the go. They can input their school info, extracurriculars, and plans with friends.
One of the great things about Google is the high degree to which you can synchronize and collaborate via the Google apps.
As adults, life can get away from us. Work, marriage, kids, it all adds up so fast that before you know it, you haven’t seen your best friend in months.
Google Calendars allows you to set up multiple calendars so you can have one that you share with your friends so you can finally make plans to grab lunch and another you share with family.
Erin Condren – Best for Creative Moms
The flexibility and organization of the Erin Condren Planners will blow you away. You will be able to keep yourself motivated and inspired while you are planning out you and your family’s daily, weekly, and monthly agenda, and itinerary. With the planning spread available, you will always know where you and your family stand.
In addition to the various planning aides in these planners, you have extra note pages, pages with checklists, and logs for communications.
No more having to argue with your teen that you never told them to mow the lawn, record here that you let them know on Saturday at noon, for example, that they needed to mow the lawn or they could not take the car out. Add some fun with stickers and quotes.
Each planner can be created to be as unique as the mom that uses it. You can customize the interior and exterior designs, pick the calendar rotation, and what month it starts on, change the binding coil color, and even add names and quotes.
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Passion Planner
Passion Planners have a unique get one, give one operation where for every planner purchased, they also give one away to a needy party.
They aim to create planners that allow people to live a fulfilling life. They offer several types of planners to help you reach your goals.
You can choose from undated weeklies or monthlies. The Passion family aims to make fitness accessible to everyone and support body positivity as well. As one of the planners that promote healthy lifestyles and overall mental and physical health, they include novel sections that you will not see elsewhere.
The Passion Roadmap, for example, helps define your short and long-term goals and break them into smaller, more manageable, and actionable steps.
The monthly check-in helps keep you focused on meeting those small steps and supports personal accountability. It features questions to answer honestly that are designed for reflection.
The monthly layout allows plenty of room to spread out and make notes while keeping you on track and focused on the month. It has sections to track personal and work projects, and a section to break down your month’s goal.
The weekly layout allows a space to track good things that have happened, so you stay positive and focused. The quotes and challengers area helps keep that motivation maxed out, and the personal and work to-do lists help you visualize work-life balance. A blank spot lets you doodle, brainstorm, and even write.
The actual paper is 120 GSM paper, sustainably sourced, and contains all the great features, plus 20 additional blank and dotted pages. The Faux leather cover has a pocket on the back and a reinforced closure.
Plum Paper by Indeme
Plum Paper Planners are stunningly designed, and they offer pretty much anything you could want in a planner. Each planner is fully engineered and designed to work optimally with the type of teaching or planning you will be doing. So if you are a mom who homeschools, there will be age-appropriate stickers, and a My Class section specific to the age group.
Additional features can include things like health information and reminders, resources, budget and expenses lists, contacts, and even sections for development, passwords, and yearly goals.
The possibilities for personalization are excellent and really work together to present a cohesive and useful planner for even the most meticulous organizers. They are durable and stand up in quality right alongside more expensive types, at only a portion of the cost, giving you what you need and a little extra.
Panda Planner Undated Daily Planner
The Panda Planners are traditional paper planners that come preorganized but are specifically designed to help you be as organized and efficient as possible. They allow you to not only become more organized and productive, but regain control over aspects of your life that you may have neglected, and have more control and ownership over your schedule and life.
Panda Planner takes a no-nonsense approach to planning. They understand that sometimes you just need help to find a way to keep on top of everything that life can throw at you. Trying to keep up with the commitments, routines, and requirements of daily life as an adult can be overwhelming and at times, even depressing and scary. Panda Planner takes a scientific approach to productivity.
Panda Planner is an undated 3-month planner, so it allows you to start any day, any time, and begin to focus on attainable, short-term goals. The various sections for daily through monthly help you organize and stay accountable. Help yourself by building small routines to promote positivity, aligned with a simple layout so that priorities are clear and productivity becomes second nature.
The inside of a Panda Planner starts at a daily level, with Morning Review, Schedule, Tasks, Notes, Priorities, and End-Of-Day Preview.
When you move to the Weekly level, it provides a Review Last Week section, a space to list projects, Plan Next Week, and even check in with your Goals.
Once you zoom out to the monthly, you have Month Overview and Plan Your Month sections, and a Focus & Daily Habits area to help build good habits. There is also a Review Your Month section similar to the weekly view, so you can have a retrospective and evaluate your progress.
Since Panda Planner presents itself as a system for building healthy habits and control over your life, you get much more with your planner.
You will have access to 11 ebooks on the subjects of productivity, life coaching, goal-setting, and others. You will also have a video quick start guide, and access to an online community to help with goals and accountability.
Legend Planner – Deluxe Weekly & Monthly Life Planner – Customizable Planner
Legend Planner is an extremely customizable planner that you customize to make your own. Choose from more than 15 colors of covers to start and add stickers to inspire you and motivate you.
Once you have your content, you can choose layouts and advanced layout options to suit your wants and needs. If you choose only one frequency of tracking, like weekly, you can select a single layout, however, if you pick a hybrid, you can select two layouts.
For a monthly-daily for example, you can select two layouts to coordinate with.
You can even use the stickers and other accessories to add details that you want like custom labels, lines, checkboxes, colors, and fonts. Personalize your planner by adding sections for holidays, events, and activities.
Even choose reminder sections like garbage day, refill meds, or pay credit card bills. These can be built right into your calendar as ongoing events.
Smart Planner Pro – Small Size (A5) (or choose larger A4 size) Undated Planner: Bonus Planner Idea
Here is a bonus selection and our 9th recommendation, the Smart Planner Pro. It comes in two sizes the small size (A5) at 8.6″ x 5.7″ or the large size (A4) at 8.5″ x 11″ and in 10 different colors. Legend Planner is an extremely customizable planner that you customize to make your own.
The layout and design have been tested and proven to achieve goals and increase productivity, time management and your fulfillment, and happiness with weekly meetings and events, monthly calendar sections, a gratitude section, and a back pocket to store notes, cards, stickers, and more.
The Smart Planner Pro agenda is designed specifically to make sure you keep yourself on track toward achieving your goals all year long while still managing day-to-day tasks.
Vegan friendly and attractive design. The undated Smart Planner Pro arrives in deluxe packaging ready to be gifted or begin to plan your days and weeks to get your stuff done.
8 Planners for Busy Moms – Wrapping Up
If you are a mom looking to up your organization game, run a home business of some sort, or just want to be able to track and schedule activities more effectively, then finding the right planner is essential.
Knowing whether you want to utilize a paper or a digital option can be a useful first step in finding the right planner for you.
You may find that you prefer the traditional paper planners that give you exactly what you are used to and function best with.
They have been the standard for decades and for good reason. They have everything you have always needed to get the results you require. Paper options also allow you the possibility to archive your past planners if you desire.
Or you may find that online planners offer a more flexible way to organize and plan your family’s activities.
They offer up-to-the-minute accuracy, and you can frequently share with the rest of the family to have it be more engaging. You can use these to collaborate with other parents or neighbors as well, so get them all on board and organized.
Either way, you decide to go, just use our breakdown here of the most popular and useful planners, factor in what you will need and what out of it, and you should be well-equipped to choose one that will serve you well for the entire year.