Friends, I’m a busy Mama.  I have four kids who I happen to homeschool.  They are with me all the day long. I have lots on my plate and so many hobbies that it’s starting to become a concern. I want to keep my life straight, but I have no interest in spending hours upon hours decorating my to-do list.

I’m going to assume you already know all about bullet journaling basics, because it’s super popular right now.  If you don’t know about it, head here to read the best simple guide I’ve ever seen.  I am all about simple.  I don’t use all of the bullet journal system.  I don’t generally write down appointments  (those go in google calendar) and I don’t write down memories in my bullet journal. Except every once in a while I’ll write down something to make sure I transfer it to my “real” journal.  My deep thoughts, travelogue, daily life journal. I keep that separate because I have no interest in keeping my to-do lists forever.

I do keep a separate journal that I write memories in.  It’s pretty and full of doodles and washi tape and I spend a lot more time on it, because I want to keep it forever and pass it down to my children.

But my bullet journal is simply for writing to-do lists and ideas before they completely escape my brain.  That is a thing and it happens to me frequently  If I don’t write down a task or put an appointment in my calendar, it’s gone.

I love to do a weekly bullet journal page and I organize this by type of activity.  The reason I love a weekly spread is because some days I hardly get anything done.  This could be for any variety of reasons: kids are sick or need extra attention, we’re constantly in the car going to practices, scouts, etc. I’m not feeling very high-energy, or an emergency comes up and we have to drop everything to take care of it.  I have found that list my to-dos for the week is much more effective–for me– than a daily list.

This is generally what my pages look like on Sunday afternoons.  Prepping for the week ahead, I write down everything that I can think of that needs to happen. Meals I know we already have the ingredients for, before I look through my pantry/fridge/freezer, cleaning/organizing projects that I knew need to happen or I will go crazy, that kind of thing.

Then throughout the week, I add things each evening, or as I think of them throughout the day.  And my spread starts to look a little crazier.  The photo below is about halfway through a week. I cross off completed items with a highlighter (the colors mean nothing. It’s just whatever highlighter was close at hand) or a pen if I can’t find a highlighter. It’s a very flexible method.

My weekly categories usually include the following:

HOME

This includes anything that needs to be done at home.  Including a little tracker for my simplified FlyLady Schedule.  I have pared down the flylady system to work well for me.  Essentially, I pick an area of the house and work on organizing/cleaning it every day that week for 15 minutes.  My goal is five 15 minute sessions.  Some days I skip it all together and some days I do two sessions. Even if I only get to it a couple of times during the week, this method has been super helpful.

COMPUTER

ERRANDS

MEALS

A LIVELY HOPE

HABIT TRACKER

SERVICE/CALLINGS/RELATIONSHIPS

BIRTHDAY GIFTS AND CHRISTMAS GIFTS

OTHER PAGES I USE FREQUENTLY: