I’m an artistic type, I have always floated along on a wave of inspiration.

Or I’m a careful planner, with lists and pages filled with ideas, advice and quotes.

Or I’m somewhere in between, with days when I plan and days when planning is the last thing I think about. Blame my star sign: I’m a Gemini and at any one time I can be simultaneously in charge and the last to know.

Menopause (I wrote about having a hygge hormonal change in this post) has had a crazy effect on my memory. I was always a little ditsy, but now I can forget words, names and things I went into a room for. Floating along on a wave of inspiration no longer cuts the ice. I need organisation, and now I have accepted I am definitely in Part Two of my Life Book I have embraced my list making side fully.

So, here for your delectation and delight are my Menopause Minds. The planners I can’t live without. I can’t promise this is it til the end of time, but I set these up a few months ago and I’m finding them invaluable in keeping tabs on life. Let me introduce them briefly (and if you want to know anything else about them, let me know and I’ll do another post on whichever one caught your fancy). Helping life run smoothly is a valuable aid to hygge. It’s much easier to relax with a mug if you know there is no work outstanding, or at the least that there is time to do your work later on and still enjoy this cup of chai now.

My Hygge Daily Planner:

This is essentially my portable brain. It holds my calendar, lists of daily tasks, longer term planning lists, useful information and working lists. I’ve been in an a5 Filofax for a few months now. but I’ve also used Leuchtturm notebooks or other notebooks here with the Bullet Journal system and found them equally as workable, although less easy to transfer ongoing information from journal to journal. Here, I can transfer book notes across to my book journal, keep a page of quotes to complete and then store in my personal journal or keep my monthly menu plans here until the end of the month, when I archive them in my Hygge Home Control Journal. The ringbinder system is really useful for that, in a way a fixed page notebook isn’t. The dividers read Diary, Dailies, Lists, Notes and Paper.

I also have a thinner, lighter version that I’m currently using and setting up. It’s not aesthetically pleasing at the moment, but I do have dividers coming from Sort Stuff Out on Etsy. It holds the absolute essentials of daily life: a calendar for planning, menu list and a few pages for notes. I think the plan is that this is just for the summer, but if a compact turns out to be useful, I may look for a more seasonal colour, or perhaps a classy marble clipbook would work?

My Hygge Journal

This sits in my bedside table drawer and is there for journalling and recording personal events. I keep inspirational quotes in it, and my Gratitude Journal as well, which is just a simple dated list of things I’m particularly grateful for that day. I don’t journal every day, but I do tend to find I journal on days when I need to make sense of stuff that’s either good or bad.

My Hygge Reading Journal

With dividers labelled Books, Films and Precis, this is essentially a record of books and films. What more can I say? I have a habit of making notes on non-fiction books, and I store many of them in here, although I carry the notes I’m currently making in my Daily Planner. It’s good to look back and see which books I’ve read, which I enjoyed and which I endured. I need to label the first divider Bookclub, I must remember to do that tonight.

My Hygge Home Control Journal

I’m a very bad Flybaby, in that I have struggled in the past to keep to any schedule or complete more than a basic declutter. I do, however, like so much about the Flylady system and I have often started to set up a Control Journal in a book, a folder or a Filofax. This is the latest incarnation, but I’m much further towards being organised than ever. I’m nicking the name from Diane in Denmark here, as Hygge Home Journal just sounds so much nicer, and lets me play with the aesthetics of the folder as well. The sections are Routines, Zones, Lists, Menu and addresses and it does basically consist of pages of lists, adapted from Flylady and Diane in Denmark’s excellent blog, which I can tick off in pencil or may possibly laminate and use a wipeable pen for sometime soon. I haven’t decided. (***Can I also say how much I like the idea of tying self-care to the week’s zone? Diane has a long list of ideas of little hyggely actions to take, sorted by room, that make absolute sense. If you’ve worked hard to have a clean bathroom, why not make the most of it?***)

My Hygge Crochet Folder

Crochet is my favourite mindful/mindless activity, depending on whether I need something to occupy my brain or hands. I have a few good patterns that I like to come back to again and again, as well as a few mandala patterns that I use when I want to make mats for under plant pots or presents. I used to keep them altogether in a plastic folder, but I couldn’t see them well. As you can see, this used to be my teaching file, which I took everywhere with me as a supply teacher, but it’s been repurposed. And, yes, it’s not fancy, but it works. I suppose one day I should give it the respect of new dividers and a tidy out, but for now it sits in my workbasket and is there when I need it.

My Hygge Christmas Planner

I have this planner, but to be honest I have my Christmas planning so streamlined that a few pages per year in my daily planner work best, alongside a list of the people I usually send cards to. When I’m feeling particularly Christmas Fairy-like I get this out and actually fill it in, but it’s more a record of Christmases past than a working planner. It’s still pretty, though, and the pages are ones I designed myself, although the dividers come from a purchased planner that I cannibalised.

And there you have my full planner collection. I have other folders that I use as storage when these get too full, but these are the ones that sit by my chair, desk or bed and get used most often.

The header today is a photograph of my planners all piled up on my desk. When you see them posed that way, there’s a definite colour preference going on, isn’t there? And tonight they will all be back home and in their respective corners. What are your planning tips? Do you have a plannner? Do you have several? How has your planning adapted as you grow older, or hasn’t it? I’m fascinated by how or if other people organise their life and systems, so I’d love to know.

How to Hygge the British Way is my gift to the world. I don’t get paid for writing it, I’m not in it for the kudos, financial rewards, to become an influencer, work with brands or otherwise make any money from the blog. That’s why there are no ads, and any products I mention and recommend have either been gifted to me or bought by me with my everyday wages or donations from supporters. Every book I review has been bought and read by me, unless stated otherwise.

I do get a couple of pennies each time someone buys from the Amazon links on my page, as an Amazon Affiliate, but otherwise if you’d like to support me, I like to give something back in return. That’s why I write books. It always feels good if you get a book back in return for some money. You can find a full list of my books at my Author’s Page on Amazon, but especially recommended for this time of year are:

Happier: Probably my most personal book, it’s the story of how I used hygge and the little things in life to help boost my happiness. I still go back and reread to remind myself what I need to do to be a happy human.

Cosy Happy Hygge: Setting up a rhythm to life and rituals to enjoy it to make for a more balanced life that handles waves and storms better.

How to Hygge Your Summer: Hygge isn’t just about candles, throws and fireside cuppas (if indeed it is ever actually about them) and this book gives you ideas for creating hygge ready spaces and paces of life throughout the summer.

If you’d like to support me, but don’t want to buy a book, I have a Paypal.Me account as Hygge Jem. Every little helps, so even a few pence goes towards the books, goods and courses I use and recommend on the site. I’m grateful for every little bit that brings me closer to my dream of full-time writing, and I know I couldn’t still be writing if it weren’t for the support of many readers and friends out there. Thank you all for every little bit of support, emotional, physical and financial, you give me.

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