Tag: hobonichi

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Journaling Secrets

Thursday Letter #11 | Planner Season

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Love my new office space 😍

In the journaling and planner community, September is known as ‘planner season’. It’s when notebook brands start rolling out their new lineups for the coming year. Two of the popular ones I always look forward to are Hobonichi and Traveler’s Company (both Japanese companies).

It’s kind of like when Apple announces the new iPhone each year. I know I’m not going to buy every release, but I’m invested in seeing what’s new. It’s the same with these two big brands. It’s just so fun to browse the new cover designs and themes for 2026, and also temptingly look at all their planner offerings in different layouts and sizes. But in my heart, I already know the single thing I’m going to get. I know that I’ll be sticking with the same planner I’ve been using these last two years: the simple and uncomplicated Hobonichi Day-Free in A6 size.

But alas, I was wrong.

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Hobbies Journaling Secrets

Journal Pages | 2025 Planner Tour

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We’re two months into the year, and I think I’ve found a planner system that works for my personality. It’s not overwhelming, it’s simple, but not boring (well, at least for me). Also, I say planner, but it’s really an all-in-one notebook. There’s the planning side of things in there, but it’s also my journal, my commonplace book, and more. Again, I’m using the Hobonichi Day-Free in A6 size, housed in a cover that’s also from Hobonichi. On their website, they described this cover design as cats of different breeds and sizes chatting happily with each other and saying, “Listen, listen!”

My planner’s home on its second year
The very first page

With the yearly view, it pretty much remained the same as last year. I have my color key and my Zebra Mildliners to mark the dates.

Also marked last year’s travels on the right page

I used to make and sell my own stickers. I no longer operate that small sticker shop, that’s why I have plenty of inventory left—some of them I use so they won’t go to waste. One design is this sticker sheet with pastel-colored mini round stickers that are transparent. Those are what I used here to mark the beginning of each new month:

These stickers have barely visible defects, glad I didn’t throw them out.
I don‘t know what the gray for is yet. Last year, I think I used them to mark my sick days.

The next page is my ‘call log’ spread. Speaking of making my own stickers, maybe 2 years ago, I had this idea of creating stickers of my family members for this spread. Thankfully, I printed plenty of extras so I can still use them for this year. But now that we no longer have a printer and I gave away my Cricut machine, I have no idea what to do when I ran out of these. The idea of buying a Cricut machine and a printer just for this seems illogical. But I really like looking at their faces whenever I flip to this spread! 😍

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Hobbies Journaling Secrets

My 2024 Planner Review

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2023, 2024, 2025

I started using Hobonichi as my planner in 2023. There are different Hobonichi planner variations, but I like the flexibility of the ‘day-free’ because 90% are just blank pages. I have the freedom to do whatever layout I want and skip some weeks, but it’s not too unstructured given that it still has the calendar and yearly pages. It worked well enough for me last year, which is why I’m using it again this year.

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