Kate Spade 17-month Planner - 2016

In the face of technology these days and the fact that everyone, everywhere, basically carries around a mini computer in the pocket of their jeans, organization and planning is made really easy. Jotting down a little 'to do' on the go or using an app to organize your dates and your schedule is really easy when you have a smart phone (and really, who doesn't?).

However, and I'm sure it's not just me because these planners wouldn't be so popular if it were, I just can't plan on my phone. I use my phone as a lifeline and there really isn't anything it doesn't do for me, but when it comes to planning and scheduling I just have to write it down. There's something about writing your dates and plans down on a monthly view calendar that keeps me organized in ways my iPhone will never do.

I've been holding onto this beauty for months now, and finally as August 2015 arrives, I can put it to good use. My first ever Kate Spade planner purchase was last year's 2015 gold polka dot design, and I swear for the year that I used it, I was lost without it. Seriously. I left it at work once and almost cried.

Today I wanted to talk about this planner. Why I purchased it again after using and abusing last year's, what I like about it and what I would change. I paid about $33.00 CAD for it on the Chapters website this year. I'd been searching for this planner, in this exact design, on the Kate Spade website for months so I was pleased when I found it on Chapters. I did purchase last year's on the official website, though, and it was the same price.

You can get the black and white striped planner from Chapters here, and the gold polka dot planner here.

I've seen a lot of planners from various 'designers' of sorts and though I haven't tried many out, there are certain things I look for in a planner and a lot of them are things that I need to have otherwise it isn't a good one in my mind.

Firstly, if a planner has a spiral it is a major bonus for me. Having a spiral makes the pages so much easier to write in as I don't have to 'break in' the spine of the book. I kind of hate having to hold open the left side of a new book just to be able to write in the right side without the whole book trying to close. The Kate Spade planner has a nice closed-book look to it on the outside but has a great spiral spine which, to me, just makes life so much easier. (And my pen fits so nicely inside the spiral so I never lose it!)

Secondly, a monthly view is so important. All planners have the weekly/day-to-day layout, which is great, and super handy if you've got a lot to do in one day and you need to organize it into parts, but for me, a planner is utterly useless unless it has a great monthly view page with a decent amount of space for me to write what I need to write. It might just be because I'm such a massively visual person, but I just need to see what my month looks like at a glance. When I think of the days of the week, I visualize a Sun-Sat calendar in my head. When I plan a day, I plot it on my mental monthly-view calendar. Having that calendar for me to write down everything I have going on in any given month is an absolute necessity.

Last year I used up the 2015 gold polka-dot agenda and I absolutely loved it. The only difference between the various designs is just that--the design. What I really liked about the gold polka-dot planner were the glossy pink interiors and the cute quotes that started off each month in the pages.

I did end up having some issues with the planner on the outside, though, because the gold polkas were not very high quality and they scratched like no tomorrow. When I first unboxed it, it was shinier than if Midas had blessed it himself, but right off the bat I ruined some of the dots on the back when I peeled off the price tag (ugh). Over time, it just looked beat. up. Only on the outside, though, the inside was forever shiny and new. The quality was there everywhere but the dots, and about 7 months into owning the planner, the string that held it together had snapped off on one end so I had to cut off the other end. I was always very gentle with it, too, it wasn't as though I carried it around in a toolbag where it rubbed against my collection of sharp pliers everyday... it was always either in my purse or in my hand.

This month's planner has me very excited because the texture of the striped 'book' itself feels a lot better than the polka dots and I very much hope that it doesn't scratch the same way (I'm hoping it doesn't scratch at all). The only thing I don't like about the striped planner is the lack of quotes month-to-month; the cover-page for each new month is just a black polka-dot design, which is fine, but I did enjoy the quotes!

All in all, the Kate Spade 17-month planner is a great one and I would definitely purchase it again. The pros vastly outweigh any cons, and you can't beat the price in my opinion. It has everything I would want in a planner and it straight up looks good. That's important to me!