I have to be organised, I cannot cope with my workload if I’m not!  My diary is like a part of my body, if I forget to take it to work for even one day, I’m at a complete loss; I turn into a gibbering idiot!  It’s not even as if I look at it many times throughout the day; perhaps once when I get in and just before I go home, but schools are such busy places if you don’t write down a future event as soon as you’re told about it then that’s it; you completely forget and end up an even more disorganized mess on another day!  It’s also because I have all my passwords for the different internet sites we use in school recorded in the back and I’ve never managed to memorise them all!  I have to have an A4 week-to-view diary so that I can see what’s going on for the rest of the week and have room to write down the many things that are planned for each day in school.

Another problem is that all of our diaries at school are ordered from the same supplier so all look the same and, until I stuck stickers all over it, I was forever picking up someone else’s diary.  That would leave me thoroughly confused!  They’re also drab and boring; navy, maroon, black, dark grey – it doesn’t really brighten you day to look at them, we all need beautiful things in our lives!

Then there’s the post-it notes; I should buy shares in the company!  I’m constantly writing myself little reminders, perhaps a resource that I need to take into school the next day or a note to remind me to write a report about a particular child.  I stick all of these on the right week in my diary and hope and pray that they stay stuck in there; unfortunately I sometimes have a post-it-note confetti moment where they all decide to fall out all over the floor!

So I needed a solution that would keep me organised, have a whole week on display at once and have room for a to-do list and a reminders list so I wouldn’t have to resort to post-it notes!  I searched high and low, there was just nothing that fitted the bill.  Some, not very many though, had pretty covers, others had week to view, but I couldn’t find any with a notes page where I could have space for a to-do list!  Then I had a brainwave – why not buy a beautiful hardback notebook and create my own diary?

Well that’s exactly what I did, I found the rather beautiful A4 casebound notebook shown above that’s just right for the job.  Even after I’d written out all the dates, a job that took far lass time than I’d thought it might, I had plenty of pages at the back where I can make notes during meetings and keep a list of passwords.

So far, so good; I’m even resisting the urge to pick up the post-it notes!  All I’ve got to do now is remember to take it with me each day!