Since July 2014 I’ve been using an Erin Condren Life Planner. It’s organized with a week-to-two pages layout, which is what drew me to it initially.

After using this planner for 10 months, I have some pro/con thoughts. Keep in mind that these are things that I consider pros and cons, you may love some of the things I think are drawbacks and vice versa. 

Pros:

Laminated Cover. A laminated cover makes it easy to wipe off any spills.

Custom Cover. You can choose and personalize your cover. You can even switch out your covers throughout the year!

Page thickness. The pages are thick enough that I never worry about pens bleeding through.

Page reinforcements. Where the pages are attached to the spiral binding, there is a layer of plastic reinforcement. This keeps pages from ripping as you are flipping through the planner

Spiral binding. The pages are held in the planner by spiral binding. This allows the planner to open flat and lets you easily write on both open pages.

Day Layout. Each day is broken down into Morning/Day/Night with space at the bottom for meal plans and to dos. This allows you to schedule your day really well without those hourly lines that some planners rely upon.

Cons:

Bulky. Because the pages are so wonderfully thick and reinforced, the EC planner is really thick.

Heavy. Partially due to its bulk, partially due to the extra pages in the back, the EC life planner is HEAVY. I found it really difficult to carry around all the time. It either didn’t fit in my purse or it took up so much room that I couldn’t fit other necessary items.

EC Planner Community. While it’s great to have so many other people sharing their planners on Instagram, it has become something of a competition. Everyone seems to buy endless stickers and spend lots of time decorating their planner. I’m trying to SAVE time by using a planner, not add another thing I need to think about!

Back pocket. There is a permanent back pocket for your “important dates” book with anniversary and birthdays. This book is supposed to allow you to transfer year-to-year but I never used it. I put birthdays and anniversaries on the actual month/day, not in a separate place I would have to remember to look. Additionally, I found that having a book in the pocket made it so the pages didn’t lie flat and it was difficult to write on these pages.

Back pocket #2. There is another pocket in the back of the book for labels and cards. While it’s nice to have these things, I had the same problem with creating creases and making my writing bumpy.

Long wait time. Because you can personalize the cover, it can take quite a while for your EC planner to arrive. It took nearly a month from order date to the date I received my planner. EC couldn’t give me an estimated ship date when I placed my order and kept pushing back the window when I would receive my planner.

Colored Pages. Each month features a different color, meaning that the morning/day/night labels are in that color. While this might work for some, especially those who like decorating, for me it was distracting and meant that I always worried about my pens or post-its clashing.