Last Updated on February 13, 2023 by Stephanie
Oooh boy! I was a little too excited about getting a haul of fun things from The Happy Planner over Memorial Day weekend this year. They had an awesome sale and I got a lot of fun things. One of the things I’ve been back and forth about getting was a Skinny Classic Planner. I loved the idea of it but I had no purpose for it. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted it… because isn’t that how all of us are?
Fast forward a couple of weeks to the sale and I found myself searching for one in my cart and I even had an idea for how I wanted to use it! In this post, I want to give you the run-down of the one I got and show you a few ideas for using it!
Details of the Skinny Classic Planner
Size
Essentially the Skinny Classic Planner is like the Classic Planner cut in half. It is the same 9.25” height as the Classic, but the width is only 4.125”. It has 9 small discs to it and it looks adorable! I personally got the Fresh Botanicals version because I’ve been on a flower kick lately in my planning journey.
Now, as far as space goes, it doesn’t have a ton for you to create massive spreads and do a lot of writing. Here’s the deal, if you read my post about How to Use a Planner in a World of Stickers, Bullet Journals, and More or my post about Which Planner Layout is Best For You to Get Stuff Done, you know I love my space! I don’t really do anything less than a Big Planner in my actual planners because I just love having the extra space to write and do all the things!
Pages
The Skinny Classic Planner has two main layouts or views: Monthly and Weekly. There is also a brain dump or blank page at the end of the weekly views as well, right before the divider. Here is a picture of the two main layouts from my own for you to check out:
The monthly view has a nice calendar at the time, a small brain dump section, and an important dates section on the left-hand side. On the right, it has the running month with a spot for each day and the weekends highlighted in a different color (which I love).
As for the weekly view, it is similar to a horizontal spread having a small unlined section for each day with a notes section for the end of the week. Nothing is especially life-changing here, but there is something that I really loved about this Skinny Classic. I don’t know how the other versions are, but in the Fresh Botanicals version, the details are awesome. Each month has a different flower in the corner and features a different color. There are three different colors in the monthly/weekly views that they cycle through. For some reason, I really enjoyed that small addition. I also loved all of the different dividers as well as they were all beautiful.
Ideas for The Skinny Classic Planner
My intention for the Skinny Classic is to use it for my analytics as well as loose planning for the month. When I originally wrote this post, I was doing my business planning in a Big paper planner by HappyPlanner, but have since switched to Notion. Check out the post about my Notion Workspace for my details on that! I did, however, keep tracking my analytics in my Skinny Classic including a small reflection page for each month’s analytics as well!
Gratitude Journal
This would be PERFECT for a daily gratitude practice! Fill each day in the weekly with 3 things you are thankful for. In your monthly view, you can list out something fun you did each day or plan out people to thank throughout the month. This would be an awesome practice for your mental health!
Exercise Journal
With its small size, this planner is perfect to fit in a gym bag. You can put your monthly goals on the monthly pages along with a loose schedule of when you’re going to the gym. Adding in a hydration sticker for each day or daily weight tracking would be an added bonus!
Dinner/Meal Planner
So, I don’t know about you, but honestly, the only meals we really plan are our dinners. Breakfasts around my house are essentially the same few things. Lunches are either the same things all the time or leftovers from the evening before. I would personally use the monthly view to list out my dinners for the month. Plan those guys out. Then use the weekly spread as a grocery list/another meal planner as you need it. You can also use the weekly to full-on plan everything you eat or use it as a food diary as well!
Random Notes Collector
If you have read anything about my weekly review or if you’ve read my post about How to Create and Use Effective To-Do Lists, you know about my random notebook. I always have a pad of paper near me when I’m working and just throughout the day. How many times a day does something come to mind and you need to just jot it down? It happens often. The Skinny Classic would be a great collector of these random ideas and thoughts. Then, during your amazing weekly review, you can move all your random notes into your typical systems of choice. If using the planner in this way, I would probably use the monthly view to jot down any dates and things that people mention to me in passing. I would save the weekly view for my to-do list items.
The One Thing and Other Accomplishments
Have you ever heard about the idea of only putting one thing on your list of things to get done? Only write down one thing to tackle the next day and no more. If you’ve checked out my YouTube Channel and watched any of my “Plan With Me” videos, you know I do this for the three areas of my life: Personal, CTFL, and School. Using your monthly view for that would be awesome. Then in my weekly pages, I would put my accomplished list. Hopefully, at the top of that list is the one thing I wanted to get done. Then, after that, I can write out all the great things I got done that day!
Umm… A Planner
Maybe you aren’t like me. You don’t need a space, you don’t really like to decorate a lot… cool! This is still a great planner for the sake of being a planner as well. Since I know my planning style is not for these smaller planners, I figured I would put out some different ideas for y’all! There is definitely enough space for a short to-do list or meeting bullet points. Small but mighty is the name of the game here!
Final Thoughts
I hope you got some different ideas from this post. If you’ve been on the fence about getting one of the Skinny Classic Planners from The Happy Planner, maybe this helped you decide! I really do like using it for my analytics, so I’m definitely going to keep doing that and purchase another one for when my original is used up!
Let me know below how you use your Skinny Planner and if you haven’t purchased one yet, why not?
