July has been an odd month for me this year – normally I’d be trying desperately to finish everything before the school holidays start, but this year is different. This year I’ve changed my contract so that I now have the pleasure of booking leave whenever I choose, however I don’t get my nice long teacher breaks any more. Instead, this year I’ve been working incredibly hard to get tasks done before the schools finish, whilst writing a huge list to get done over the summer whilst there’s no one about to disturb me!

I’ve started of with my normal monthly layout – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This month I’ve added a few goals that I want to work on. Perimenopause has had an impact on my body, so I’m trying to be kinder to myself and eat well and move more – not always easy when you work from home and have caring responsibilities.

Loving this washi tape from Tiefossi – the gold design gives it a lovely sheen. I really likes this layout as it didn’t feel too cluttered which always makes life feel a little overwhelming. I liked limiting the number of tasks assigned to each day and it was good to have empty lines of some days – again helping me to not feel too overwhelmed. This was a week where I was visiting my mum in hospital, so using the meal plan this way where I had a list and could just choose from it each evening really worked as I was able to choose more by the time I had to prepare the meal. I had chosen to focus on gratitude this month as life has been feeling a little too much recently and writing a short entry each day definitely helped.

This layout is a returning favourite as it feels like the Goldilocks of space for each day – not too much, not too little, but just right! This year I’m trying not to be too precious and perfect about my layouts, so have been drawing most of them freehand and I’m seven months in and the world hasn’t ended yet! That ND perfectionist streak is strong and I’m consciously trying little things to ‘break’ it whilst not causing myself too much anxiety.

After falling ill partway through this week, the gratitude list never got completed. This was planned out to be a super-busy week, so the no-nonsense layout really helps and having the meals for each day at the bottom of each section means that I don’t have to use different parts of the page when planning my daily routine.

Final week of the term for the kids and I decided to use a similar layout to the week before. The last week is always a bit of a rollercoaster with special events and changes to their timetables, so I try to make my weekly plan as streamlined as possible to help me to cope.

First week of the holidays for the boys and limbo-land for me. I keep using this layout and I can never quite decide whether or not I really like it. It’s definitely best for non-working weeks where I haven’t got to put in my workplace or school-run arrangements and I’m getting a little twitchy just looking at the different lengths of the gratitude lines…

Which layout is your favourite?