Planner – The most essential part of of my office arsenal is my planner . It is literally the heartbeat of my day. Even though I work from home, I try to maintain a very detailed cleaning schedule for my home, and am a full time online college student, as well as trying to schedule in time for my personal development practices, on top of having a full time job. My life would be hectic and stressful, as well as messy from having post-it notes strewn all over my house if it was not for having my one personal planner to organize and maintain all of my tasks that I need to complete. Having a functional planner is essential to planning out the monthly, weekly, and daily tasks of my life to keep me balanced and organized. I have tried a wide variety of different styles and brands of planners. I have some that worked for me in terms of functionality, and I have found some that just did not really vibe well with me. Finding the perfect planner set up is like finding the perfect pair of jeans. It needs to be comfortable to write in and yet stylish enough to encourage you to look at it every day.
Pens and Highlighters– Aside from the traditional black and blue inked pens for daily writing purposes, I also make a point to keep some colorful and pretty writing utensils on hand for decorating my journal and planner. Both the Paper Mate Flair Medium and the Click Inc are my top choices for use in my planner and journals. Along with an assortment of color highlighters to use, I try a variety of all things writing from packs I pick up at the local Dollar Tree to a pretty and fancy pen spotted while running into Staples to grab a pack of printer paper and ink. It pretty much goes without saying, that no office could be remotely functional without things to write with.
Accessories– You know, those little treasured trinkets that every self-respecting office contains- paper clips, binder clips, index cards, and such. In addition to those types of accessories, I also keep a collection of thumb drives on hand in my office. Between blogging, and taking my college courses, I tend to do a lot of writing assignments, and I have found from past experience, the hard way, that it a great value to save those writing assignments to an external memory drive in the event that my laptop takes an unfortunate tumble into the floor and all things on it are forever lost. Understandably, a memory drive is now considered a must have for my office so that in the event of a recurrence of such tragedy, at least I will still have access to all of my hard work. Finally, an understated office supply that I must have on hand is something to jot down quick notes, phone numbers, websites, or names to reference. I try to keep a small stash of memo pads and a few blocks of post-it notes on hand for such. That way when I am online researching something, and I just need to quickly write a name or address, or even a website to look up later, I can jot it down quickly on the post-it note, and not have to worry about having a bunch of random names taking up space on a full notebook page that I have to look at later and try to remember what it is for. The sticky notes are perfect to stick in my planner on future dates, in my notebook for future reference on pages where I am currently writing ideas on that particular subject, or to the top of my laptop when I need to return to a specific website when I get logged back online.
Notebooks– My home office would not be complete without a vast array of notebooks. I have everything from hard notebook binders, to basic dollar store composition books, to journal style notebooks, to a small collection of Happy Planner notebooks created from packs of Happy Planner brand filler paper sheets. I use them for a variety of purposes. I have some that I use specifically for journals, in which I jot down my daily affirmations, log my list of daily things I am grateful for, or just purge as my thoughts ramble on about life and all its mysteries. I have notebooks that I use specifically for work to jot down things to follow up on for the next day or to track my productivity from time to time to give myself a reality check about how much time I wander off from my actual work related work. I have several that I use for school, as I am currently enrolled in an online college to complete my bachelor degree, I keep a few notebooks to work out homework problems and jot assignment details for reference. And, I keep a few notebooks on hand for my personal development in which I jot down blog ideas, social media challenges that I wish to participate in, or note from any personal development online course I take or self-help audio books I listen to.
Desktop Calendar– I know it sounds crazy in a world where cell phones have taken the place of our calendars, our calculators, and even our alarm clocks. And, given that I keep a personal planner that I refer to on a daily basis morning and night. But, I work from home and there are times when I am working at my desktop computer and I need a quick reference to the date, either the current date or a future date, and it is just so convenient to not have to stop what I am doing in my work to pick up my phone and open the calendar app or go fetch my planner to flip through, but to just glance up to my handy, ever-waiting desk calendar. I do not write anything on the desktop calendar, but I do circle the weekend dates that I am scheduled to work, and that provides a quick and easy reference at a glance for days that I cannot plan anything, at least until that evening, for that day.
Laptop– My personal laptop is an older one that I purchased roughly about five years ago. I know, with the rate in which technology advances, I am sure it is darn near obsolete at this point. However, it still works perfectly and does anything I need it to do in order to complete my writing tasks or perform any homework assignment that I currently have to complete for school. Therefore, I see no need to update at this time. My laptop is a crucial part of my everyday life, however, and it is generally turned over every morning by 7:00 am at the latest. Ironically, I do not use my laptop to surf the internet or look at social media. I save that for my smartphone and look at Pinterest on my Ipad. I really only use the internet on the laptop to do research for a writing project or to access a website in which I will need to download or print something, such as when I purchased my annual parking pass for the beach. Laptops nowadays come in a variety of price ranges and can be very expensive to very affordable, depending on the purpose in which you intend to use the laptop. So, I know that when the unfortunate time comes in which I will need to put my current laptop down, I will have no choice but to replace it, as it is now a vital part of my daily existence.
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Life, on purpose! 
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