2025 Planning... Still

Some of my most popular posts are about my obsession continued daily use with my paper planners, specifically, my Hobonichi Cousin. At this point, I’ve used this same planner for… ten years? (Goes and checks…) (Yes, I’ve saved them all)

If you want to check out ALL of my previous planner posts, you can click here

More specifics:

My 2019 Planners as Planned
A Peek at my 2020 Planner Lineup
My 2021 Hobonichi
My 2021 Planner System
The Joy of 2022 Planning
Hobonichi Weeks v. Cousin
2024! Planning

And again ALL THE PLANNER RELATED STUFF I’VE EVER PUT ON MY BLOG

So, what’s new in my Hobonichi Cousin for 2025?

I’ve changed up how I use some of the “special” pages.

For instance, these pages at the front. (What are they called? I don’t know)

For the past few years, I’ve tried using these pages as a habit tracker. Specifically, I had three habits that I tried to grow last year. I simplified my methods, tried to #focus, experimented with different systems of moving habits to my daily pages…. all sorts of things that I’m not doing a great job of explaining. And when I set up this year’s hobonichi, I realized if insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results… well. I needed to switch it up.

So I thought about what has worked for me in the past, and decided to just use these as a monthly goal collection area. Each month, I’ll set goals for myself, write them here and cross them off when I’m done.

What hasn’t changed? My book tracker page, ^^ up there. It’s perfect!

And I’m still using this for tracking my tv/ movie watching. I started doing this just to see how my input affected my writing but really, it’s handy to go back and see what I’ve watched when someone at a party asks, “have y’all watched anything good recently?” This is 2025. There’s a LOT of content to keep track of.

Last year I used two different pages to track my decluttering progress and my self-care activities. (After going through breast cancer, self-care hits differently for me. It’s not that I have self-care goals, exactly, but when I do something nice for myself/ my body, having a page where I can write it down, helps me remember that I can’t forsake being kind to myself.)
I have monthly and weekly decluttering tasks, so this is where I will record them. Again, it’s not like anyone is asking me at a dinner party, “have you done any good decluttering lately?” but it’s to keep me accountable. Also, this a good excuse to use these excellent stickers.

Speaking of stickers, here are the ones I chose for the cover of my Hobonichi cousin planner. I am feeling a demure champagne - fire - sword - sparkle vibe this year.

I have some other things I’m going to talk about in my January newsletter, so make sure you’re signed up for it, so you see all my 2025 planning tools and tricks! Sign up here.

Twenty Inventive New Year’s Writing Prompts

I am a professional author, full of interesting ideas and ready to help other writers create amazing stories.

Here are twenty inventive New Year’s Writing Prompts to start your writing year off right.

1.       A professor has a dream about no one coming to her class on the first day of the semester

2.       A mom realizes that her kids don’t go back to school until February

3.       A grumpy neighbor gets mad that Christmas lights are still on

4.       A gym owner hands out cookies and gets punched in the face

5.       The lights go out on New Year’s Eve and don’t come back on in the morning

6.       A candle store goes out of business because every single Christmas gift gets returned

7.       A woman’s New Year’s Resolution is to leave her husband

8.      Fireworks go off on New Year’s Eve but then a city realizes it was a bomb

9.     The ball drops in Times Square, breaks open and ______ flies out

10.   Everyone is forced to relive the last year over again

11.   A child’s New Year’s Resolution is to get their parents to divorce

12.   A January calendar is printed with the wrong date

13.   Travelers use the wrong dated calendar to book airline tickets that are one day off

14.   A woman decides to leave her Christmas lights up all year round

15.   A granddaughter starts to declutter her grandmother’s house and finds a shocking amount of____

16.   A boy gets a new pair of sneakers and discovers they allow him to_______

17.   A grocery store gives away a chance to win a free car with every pound of kale sold.

18.   A blizzard shuts down a mountain highway, and two strangers find the same cabin

19.   There is a national emergency signal sent at 12:01 am that says _____

20.   There is a magical calendar and whatever you write on it comes true

If any of these writing prompts tickle your fancy, you might love one of my books! You can check them out points up up there! And if you write a bestseller based on one of my prompts, please acknowledge me in the back.

To help other authors come up with great ideas, pin one of these photos to Pinterest!

Hobonichi Weeks vs. Cousin - Why I'm Switching Again

So first you should probably check out my 2020 planner post. And my 2019 planner post. And my peek into the 2021 Hobonichi here and HERE

So… 2023 was the year that I tried the Hobonichi Weeks!
I ordered my Cousin in late 2022, per usual, but got an itch to switch in the spring.

I had originally switched from my Medium ring planner to the Hobonichi Cousin years ago because I was in a very busy phase of life. The kids were in a million activities, and with all the practices, orthodontist appointments, etc., I needed SPACE to write.

This Spring, I realized that I was going down a kid and that maybe, just maybe I could go into a smaller planner. One that could fit in a purse! Oh, the luxury.

So for my birthday, I bought myself an April start Hobonichi Weeks, a preloved Louis Vuitton cover and monthly tabs. I moved into it nearly right away and it took some time to figure out how to plan.

You see, the Hobonichi Cousin has a horizontal weekly layout and the Weeks is a vertical weekly layout. This takes some adjusting for someone like me.

But it still had my beloved Hobonichi paper, the graph design, the Japanese words. All in all, it was a good experiment.

Yeah.

You caught that, right? My time with the Weeks was fun, but I’m headed back to the Cousin for 2024.

Why?

See the easily wrinkled pages - from being thrown in a bag. I’m a mess.

I’ll get into some of my pros and cons but I won’t do a full review of what’s in the Weeks or Cousin. There are plenty of YouTube videos about the Weeks and I’ve reviewed the Cousin extensively at the links above.

FOR ME…

I just never fully settled into the Weeks. The note pages in the back were somewhat helpful in meetings and for phone calls and such, but I still found myself using my 2023 Cousin for morning pages/ journaling because the Weeks pages were too narrow for me to journal in.

Yes, I could throw it in most of my handbags, but that would result in some wrinkled pages, no matter how I secured the cover. I didn’t want to invest in another cover for the Weeks, especially when I have a medium ring planner that I could use if I needed a secured cover.

And I guess in the end, I just prefer the room in the Cousin. Even if I have fewer soccer practices and orthodontist appointments to keep track of, I feel more comfortable with a little more room to play in.

So I’m going back - full time - to the Hobonichi Cousin in 2024. It’s not you, Hobonichi. It’s me.

Stay tuned for my posts on how I’m going to use my planners in 2024 by subscribing to my Women With Books Substack.

For ALLLLLLL my planner related blog posts, click HERE

And check out my books - made possible by Hobonichi-assisted planning - HERE.