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.