Tomorrow marks the beginning of August, the official back to school [BTS] month. Target has their school supplies stocked to the brim, American Eagle preps to sell thousands of pairs of denim jeans, and college girls, and their mothers, run around hectically debating what planner to get. There have already been two installments of Planning for Planners; Hannah did a complete breakdown of the Lilly Pulitzer agenda AND the Erin Condren Life Planner! How many different types of planners could two girls have? Three, to be exact. Today, I’m talking all about Plum Paper Planners and why I chose it over all of its competitors! Stick around till the end for a surprise, all  planner addicts will love it.

THE BASICS

The Plum Paper Planner is a growing planner business located in the beautiful city of San Diego, California! They are known to offer a cheaper and more customizable version of the Erin Condren Life Planner! If you’re a big lover of customizing every last piece of your planner, this is the one for you!

– You can choose from over 50+ covers and the fun doesn’t stop there! The designers over at Plum Planners are super nice and allow you to send them hex codes (these are screen colors, so they differ a tad bit from print colors) to change the color scheme of the cover you chose! For example, the default color options of my whale planner (It’s so cute y’all!) were a light teal color with a peachy orange detailing for your monogram, name, and one whale. I changed the peachy orange color to a magenta/hot pinkish color! They nailed it!

-You can opt to have your monogram — with a scalloped border/script font or circle border/vine font — or not. You can opt to have your name on the bottom — with a multitude of different fonts to choose from — or not. If you don’t want either, the print will cover the card stock entirely which is still super cute!

-The inside of every planner includes year-at-a-glance pages, notes pages in each month, a section for passwords & contacts, and yearly special dates.

Next, you’ll need to choose what style of planner you want: daily, student, family, teacher, monthly, fitness/meals and even wedding! For the daily (or regular) planner, you also get to choose the weekly layout! There are 4 options that totally depend on you:

• morning/afternoon/evening [most like Erin Condren]
• hourly increments
• vertical with just lines
• horizontal layout

**For the family and student planners** You can customize your column headers with different titles; want to assign each section to one of your classes? You can do that. Want to create a section for your blog or workouts? You can do that too! I opted to leave my blank since my classes will change around.**

-Most planners are available in a 12 month layout! You can add up to 6 more months if you choose to do so! The Student planner has the option to only include 6 months (1 semester) — so if you wanted to do two planners for the school year –you could also do that! The 6 month version runs for $16.00 which could also be a good option if you just want to try out this style of planner.

You can also choose the start month, which is a plus. Take notice of the shipping/processing time to decide when your planner should start. Currently, they have a processing time of 4-6 weeks, followed by a shipping time of 3-8 business days! I’d probably have mine start in September! I ordered my planner when there was a 3-5 weeks processing time and it took around 4 days for it to arrive from Cali. (Ordered: June 28 Shipped: July 21 Received: July 25) It came shipped in a really cute box with a generous amount of bubble wrap!

-Lastly, you can choose add ons! I personally didn’t add anything–besides stickers– because I know I wouldn’t use them and the built in features of the student planner would be enough for me! However, you can choose from a host of different add ons including: fitness/health, bills, chores checklist, to-do lists, baby, my class, blog planning, and address book!

A Glance At My Planner and Why I Love It

1. I’m all about customization! I loved that I could change the colors and fonts if I wanted too! The Plum Paper customer service was also quick and super easy to work with–even with the large volume of customers they receive this time of the year! I chose the whale pattern, it’s absolutely perfect and super vibrant! There is a frosted plastic sheet that protects both covers, as well! I find it to be a great amount of protection and love the flexibility that the planner has. I’m a student so I’m definitely going to be carrying around this planner in my book bag or purse and feel super comfortable doing so! *Treat your things well and they WILL last!*

 

2. The price is reasonable. Last year, I purchased the Lilly Pulitzer large agenda in Trippin’ and Sippin’. I paid around 30 dollars for my Lilly agenda which wasn’t too steep in my opinion! The cost of my student planner with a fun sticker sheet set was $39.95 with shipping (a scary $8.75 — -and honestly my only issue with Plum Paper). The price included the edits I made to my color scheme, the font of my name on the cover, and the option of adding my monogram — all of which are necessities!

3. It gives me room to decorate the way I want without clashing. The style of the Plum Paper planners is definitely simplistic, but gives me a great oppurtunity to decorate with washi tape, etsy stickers, and colored pens without clashing!  I’m thinking about doing a Plan With Me series on the blog! Comment if you would be interested in that! I’m still playing around with my layouts. If you’re not going to be a big hands on decorator, but still want something that’s pretty — you could consider paying the extra for the Erin Condren which has super cute decorations already designed!

 

So, I hope that was a good overview of the Plum Paper Planners! Maybe I even convinced you to invest in one of your own! If you do plan on purchasing one, the lovely team at Plum Paper Designs have offered you — the readers — a coupon! Head on over to their Etsy shop and enter the code SWIRL10 for 10% off your entire purchase! It will be live the entire month of August so hurry and order while you can! **I’m not receiving any compensation for sharing this code or writing this post! I’m only sharing because I truly love my Plum Paper planner and I think you will too! So go ahead, invest in a great planner!**

I personally love writing about planners-hence the LENGTHINESS–and I’ve become addicted to decorating! If you want to see more posts about planning and decorating, like this post so i know if i should do more! Did you order a planner this year? Which one did you get? Sound off in the comments, I’m curious to see which ones you all picked up!