Photos are broken on this post! Sorry!

Mid-2024 Planner Roundup

It's basically June, which is the 6th month. It's almost halfway through the year, so I feel like it's a good time to do a retrospective on my planner. And stationary.

In 2023, I made the incredibly hard decision to stop using the Mossery planner. Zeke got me one several years ago and I'd used one for about 3 years. The conceit of the planner is simple: you buy a cover, then every year buy inserts. Mossery has really good inserts- there's multiple kinds of planners (horizontal, vertical, dated, and undated) and notebooks/sketchbooks you can choose to use too. The inserts (called refills on the site) aren't too expensive either. The combo of inserts I like is under $30 (two light refills for the halves of the year and a grid notebook), which is really reasonable.

HOWEVER. Mossery is a Malaysian-based company. For the US, you have to reach a $90 minimum purchase for free shipping. Without free shipping, shipping is $25-ish dollars. That means for me, a yearly refill is a $50 purchase. I don't remember if shipping was always that pricy and I'd gaslit myself into being fine with that, or if it used to be cheaper.

Unable to make myself spend $50 on a planner, I turned to alternatives. (Sidebar: I think $50 is ok to spend on a planner if you really like it. However, this isn't even a whole planner. It's inserts for a cover you already own.) I landed on the Hobonichi Techo Weeks MEGA. This planner was $35 on Jetpens. (and Jetpens gives free shipping on orders over $35!)

The Techno Weeks

As you can tell from the picture above, the Techno Weeks is a slim, compact planner. It's 7.4" by 3.7" and I specifically bought the "MEGA" version which has 200 graph pages in the back, versus the 73 additional pages in the regular version. I really like the format of "left page has the week, right page is blank" so this was perfect for me. I also have very neat, small handwriting.

(In grad school, I used the regular Hobonichi Techno and really liked it, so if you have a more intense schedule and/or want something even smaller, that may be a good alternative for you.)

Pros and Cons

Pros
  • Small size that fits perfectly on my desk and in bags
  • Good weekly layout
  • Monthly layouts in the front of the planner have lots of space for writing future plans
  • Option to have lots of extra pages in the back
  • Two built-in bookmarks
Cons
  • No elastic to keep it shut- mine is getting pretty thick since I use washi tape and stickers on my weekly spreads. Having a built in closure or elastic would be nice.
  • Size- I know I listed this in pros. But I think it could be a con for some people.
  • Thin Paper - this doesn't bother me, but since the paper is so thin there's often some bleed through. I actually like this in a notebook/planner and I've found it's not too bad even with "heavier" pens. But if bleed through bothers you, there are planners with thicker pages.