How I stay organised - featuring Kikki.K

That title should actually be more along the lines of 'How I try to stay organised - featuring Kikki.K', but anyway...

As I've mentioned before, I've recently rekindled my love of stationery and all the cutesy goodness that it brings. I loved art and craft as a kid and naturally with that came a love of stationery as well. My favourite place to visit as a kid for present ideas or if my mum and dad were feeling a bit generous, for a random little gift, was Stationery Box. Anyone remember them? I'm pretty sure they were bought over and became Ryman, but either way, the shop is still sort of there. With finding my love of paper and craft again, I recently got drawn into the world of Filofax. I had always been sort of organised, but never before like this. I also never realised the extent of the Filofax community, and it really is a community. If you don't have an interest in stationery or Filofax, then this post might make you think that I'm completely crazy, but trust me it's very satisfying seeing all your organising in one cute little folder.

I started off with a few Filofax's and then gradually I started seeing more and more people talking about Kikki.K, a lovely Swedish brand, similar to Filofax. I first seen them around instagram, when everyone was going on and on about their now discontinued mint planner with gold got accents. I knew at this point that I had to get my hands on one! I had been using the Filofax Finsbury in raspberry and the Filofax Classic in pink up until then, but I wanted something a bit more colourful and girly. I eventually found a lovely girl from Australia, where Kikki.K is mainly based, who was selling one for auction on ebay, which I managed to nab for £120. It seems pretty steep, but honestly, I absolutely love it. Since then, I've also purchased their newest planner release, the lilac time planner with gold accents and gold rings. It's beautiful. I don't know if it's possible to love and treat a planner like a child, but I kind of do. Oh well. Now, onto the planners themselves.

Like I said above, I have the mint and lilac time planners. The mint planner is the large size, which is the equivalent to Filofax A5 and the lilac is the medium size, equivalent to Filofax personal. I absolutely adore the colours, especially the lilac with the cute little gold diamonds. I'm not so keen on the gold rings, I wish they weren't quite as gold and maybe a little less yellow, but you can't please everyone. The leather on the planners is really good quality and is quite supple and bendy, meaning that you can fit loads inside. All of the Kikki.K time planners come with monthly, weekly, address, birthdays, restaurants, expenses and to do tabs, but I only use some of them. I don't use the address, birthday or restaurants tabs, so I just whip them out and replace them with note paper or list paper. The lilac planner comes with really cute pale pink dividers and the mint planner comes with dark royal blue dividers, which I wasn't keen on at all.

I use the monthly pages to plan out birthdays, appointments and shifts at work and I used the weekly pages to write out things in more detail. I use the expense pages to work out where my money is coming in from and where and when it going, which has helped me save a bit of money recently, and even helped me get back on track with my credit card! I have a habit of just spending money on my card without realising how much I'm actually spending; but now when I buy something, I write down what I bought, where I bought it, how much it was and how I paid for it. It makes it really easy to see where most of my money is going and shows me where to cut back. It's super handy!

I like to decorate the weekly pages with washi tapes, stickers and generally just things that make the pages look a little more fun. I tend to do things more if the pages I'm looking at are a little more appealing. It's kind of childish that I need a bit of colour to draw my attention to it, but what ya gonna do. Plus, look how cute the little stickers are! I've been using the Kikki.K planners for for around ten weeks now and I have to say that I've been a lot more organised as a result. I'm going to be incorporating my blogging schedule into my planners very soon, as I think it will help me be able to post a bit more frequently, if I'm being reminded to do it on a daily basis!

After reading this back to myself I realise that I come across as a little bit weird, but you love what you love! If you do like Filofax or stationery and the like, then please comment letting me know I'm not the only stationery nerd out there, or follow me on my planner instagram - hellozeldaloves. I'm looking for penpals as well, as I have a thing for writing letters, too. If any of you'd like to be penpals, please let me know!

I hope this didn't make me sound too crazy! ;)

- I'd just like to point out that this post was in no way sponsored, I just love Kikki.K! -