Good morning, Daisies! I’m excited to chat a little more in depth today about my July planner setup, in particular, how I managed to go tiny with Cocoa Daisy.  I was excited to switch from standard to passport, but I knew it would take some thought and consideration to make it work – and I’m happy to say that it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be! If you’ve ever wanted to go small but weren’t sure if you could make it work for you, I hope you find something here that helps.  Let’s get started!

So first, here’s a comparison shot showing a standard (left) and passport.  They’re not too far off width-wise, but as you can see, there is quite a difference in height, reducing the available real estate per page by about a third.

First and foremost, I needed to figure out how tp transition the functional parts of my planner down to passport size – if those didn’t work well, the whole thing would be a wash. In my standard size planner, I had four inserts: a monthly insert, my Dori booklet, plastic wallet insert, and Simple Dori for memory keeping.  Obviously, there would be no way to keep my Simple Dori in my new passport, but I hoped to transfer the other inserts over pretty much in the same format had been using them before. Let’s take a look at the components and how I made adjustments for the smaller size.

First up, the monthly calendar insert.  In standard size, the boxes were large enough to be able to write appointments and events.  In the passport size, however, the boxes aren’t big enough for anything other than an icon, even when printed across two pages.  So my solution was to print a one-page calendar and adhere it into a dot grid insert.  I use small stickers and washi to indicate appointments and events, and then write the details on the facing page.  It’s only been a week, but so far it’s working well. I’m planning to use this size for August, too, so I’ll transfer this insert over and glue in an August calendar. Here is a comparison between my June calendar in standard size and my July calendar in passport size:

Next up is my planning insert.  I had been using the standard Dori booklet for weekly plans, challenge prompts, habit tracker, bills, and social media planning.  I managed to get all those items except for the social media planning into the Mini Dori, AND I’m still able to use my beloved tabs, which makes me super happy! Let’s see how.

First, my planning pages.  One thing I loved about the standard Dori was that I could plan an entire week on one two-page spread.  I used each section for a day except the last section on the right, which was Saturday and Sunday.  Since the Mini Dori only has 4 sections per spread instead of 6, I had to reconfigure a bit.  I still wanted to do a week on two pages, so I stepped way outside my comfort zone and gave up the one-section-per-day idea.  Instead, I stamped some checkboxes for to-do’s and left space for stickers to notate events or appointments. The dividing lines are purely decorative now – I use the checkboxes as I need them and find a bit of empty space when I need to add an appointment/event sticker. It’s in roughly chronological order, but not strictly so. And there is still room for a die cut or decorative sticker or two.

Surprisingly, this system is working well so far.  Keeping the label stickers for day-specific events helps my eye go to them when I open up my insert, and i kind of like the loose, unstructured style.  We will see how this continues to evolve in the weeks ahead.

After my planning section are my challenge prompts page and habit tracker. Cocoa Daisy offers the challenge printable in a variety of sizes, so it was easy peasy to print out the Mini Dori size and glue that right in.  (Also, how awesome is it that the graphic matches the art on the Dori spread this month??)

The habit tracker was only slightly more difficult to figure out.  I needed to reduce the number of habits to account for the narrower booklet, but that was no problem because I had decided to not track my steps this month anyway. So those rows were easy to just delete out.  From there, it was a logical decision to cut the month in half and print the tracker in two sections. I did lose the extra page for decoration, but I did have some space for a couple cute stickers, so it’s all good!

My bill tracking pages were also super easy to transfer:

Social media planning was the one area that wasn’t working in my standard Dori and therefore also wouldn’t work in my Mini Dori.  I had been using the divided pages in the back of the booklet much like I used the front divided pages – one section per day, with to-do’s, posts, and due dates for team projects listed in the appropriate days.  But I quickly realized once I set up that June system that I needed to see the month as a whole to be able to plan ahead.  So for July, I am using a system similar to my monthly system – in another blank dot grid insert, I have months printed for both July and August and am using stickers to indicate blog due dates and challenge lead due dates. On the two following pages, I list out what needs to be done and when.

This system is working well so far, and it also helps me to have this extra insert in my planner – it takes the place of the Simple Dori, which now has its own leather cover (the red one in the first photo). This does mean that the back of the Mini Dori isn’t being used right now, but I will definitely use it again if an idea strikes.

I felt really good about getting all my functional items in a small format that works for me, so the only other thing to look at was decorative items. Since I’m still using the Simple Dori for memory keeping, I’m able to use a personal dashboard to decorate the front cover of it.  For the Mini Dori and dot grid inserts, the tags and die cuts are the perfect size.  I used papers from the planner kit to cover all of them.

I used to use more dashboards for my vinyl inserts, and as it turns out, I still can! Here is the adorable beach dashboard (personal size), trimmed down to fit, next to another full personal dashboard for comparison.  I think it works well!

It turns out that pocket cards are also the perfect size for my passport planner. They can be centered on a piece of decorative paper, or layered with another pocket card like I’ve done here. Here’s a comparison between my standard decor and my passport decor.

When I first decided to switch sizes, I had been concerned about being able to use all my kit items, but it really hasn’t been a problem at all.

Thanks so much for hanging with me through this long book of a post, haha! I hope that you have found something helpful – please feel free to ask questions or leave comments down below.  Until next time!

xoxo

Kristine