Planning as a hobby or in general can get expensive. Today I wanted to share what I consider the best planner supplies to invest in for your system. I feel like if you have these five items, there are endless possibilities to what you can do with your planner.

Some of these may seem obvious to the planner veteran. I wanted to make sure that anyone, no matter when you started planning, could take away at least one thing from this post. 

So let’s begin! 😊

1. A Printer

Hear me out. Not everyone in the planner community owns a printer.

It can be quite tedious to print, cut and punch everything yourself. I get it…but there is so much you can do with the ability to print. 

You can pretty much design and print your whole planner (if you haven’t heard of Canva, you’re welcome 😂). If creating your own inserts and dashboards is not for you, Etsy has endless options for affordable quality printables!

This might be an investment for some of us, which I totally understand. There are cheaper options out there if you want to start off nice and simple.

Here in Australia, I purchased my printer from Kmart. At the moment the same printer is priced at $59 AUD (including b/w and colour ink). The only thing this printer doesn’t do which might be a deal breaker for some is double-sided printing. I have no issue doing it manually but just something to keep in mind. For me, it gets the job done!

2. A Laminator

Guys, I think this is the most life changing supply after owning a printer. 

Back in the day when options for dividers, clear dashboards and pockets were pretty much non-existent in Australia (thankfully May has us covered now 😉), a laminator was your best friend. It’s amazing what fusing together a piece of plastic can accomplish haha.

Pair the laminator with your printer, you are pretty much good to go!

If you’ve never tried to DIY your own dividers or clear pocket dashboards, do a quick search on YouTube and you will find a plethora of videos to walk you through the steps on how to make different items for your planner. And this isn’t limited to ring planners, this is definitely a universal supply that you can utilise no matter what planner you’re currently using.

3. Sticky Notes

If someone asked me, you can only use one planner supply for the rest of your life…it would no doubt be sticky notes.

There have been instances where I have purely planned on just sticky notes because my planner system was up in the air. And they can be stuck anywhere! So if you want an important reminder in your face, you can do this with a sticky note 😂

A fun way to upgrade your use of sticky notes is to run them through the printer. There are so many printable options out there, including decorative! One of my favourite things about the planner community is that so many of share freebie printables with each other that look so good or are super functional.

If you don’t own a printer, there are options to purchase sticky notes with specific layouts already printed on them. Sometimes these are my preferred options vs printing a full insert for my planner. Sticky notes are small and easy to take on the go 😊

4. Page Flags/Transparent Flags

With page flags, there are paper options for these aswell. What I am referring to here is our transparent options which I feel are revolutionary to the planner community.

I might be a tad dramatic 😅 but I get so excited when I discover a new way to use these! They are so handy for annotating notes, leaving quotes on pages, laying out a new routine (we can’t forget about the task card system). 

I’ve also used these to replace dividers when still trying to figure out the sections I want in my planner, or if I wanted a slimmer setup without dividers.

If you have any other ideas or ways you’ve used transparent flags or sticky notes, let us know in the comments! 😊

5. Label Maker

This is one of those items where it can be an investment but once you have it, you don’t want to go back 😂

If you wanted to, you could sub in your printer with the right sticker paper. But the label maker is such a good tool to have for your planner and general organisation around your home. 

There are so many times where I have attempted to handwrite something for my planner, tossed it and decided to use my label maker instead haha. I tend to utlise my label maker when I want to label my dividers or create task cards for common things I don’t want to constantly write in my planner. 

 

The label maker I currently use 😊

I would highly recommend to check out Instagram to find other creative ways to use your label maker for your planning system (and make sure to credit the creator aswell 👌🏽)

And there you have it! I would consider these to be the best planner supplies to invest in. Let us know if there is anything you would consider staple to your system or that you could never go without for your planner.

Until next time! 😊

 

-Tash @creatively_tash