DIY Homeschooler

2026 update: Well. Stopped using it for a brief season. Very brief. But I’m back to the only planner that has consistently worked for me! (Your mileage may vary….)

2022 update: Yep. STILL using it! The binder is in great shape. Just keep purchasing the refills.

2021 update: Yep. Still using it! (Has to be a record for me….)

If you have been around a while, you may have noticed a scheduling trend here — planner sampling! Each year it seems I’ve tried a new planner. Nothing wrong with any of them. They all work fine. You could choose any one of them and find yourself perfectly at home. Not me. Call me a perfectionist. I was looking for the PERFECT planner. Well, I found it!

Given my track record, I would not have invested the money for a planner at that time. But I saw a 1/2-price deal and decided to jump. Boy, was that a good call!

What’s In The Box

The Lux Pro Productivity Planner comes in a beautiful gift box with a 6-month pack of undated planner sheets along with a binder to put them in. The binder comes in several colors. Over time, I think I’ve ended up with most of them.

My planner came with the following sheets:

• Nicely illustrated instruction pages.
• Space to write down long-term goals (main goal, milestones, and action dates).
• Dated calendars.
• Month-at-a-glance pages.
• A place to record reflections on the prior week.
• Places to track finance and savings.
• Project planner.
• Blank pages for notes.
• Daily planner pages.

The bulk of the planner is the daily planner pages. These include a place to record your top three critical tasks, other tasks, exercise, water, and the day’s schedule. There is also a place to reflect on the day’s wins and progress goals. The backs of these sheets have very small dots to make a great bullet journal or simply lines on which to keep notes. I use the back to keep a list of projects I have going and the next thing to do on those projects.

Since the planner comes with a 6-month set of blank pages, I simply store the pages I’m not using in the beautiful gift box. I intend to keep them in the box and date them as I move on to a refill set.

At this time, refill pages are not available for purchase. So each year I purchase a new binder. The binder with pages and 6-month set of refill pages gets me through a complete year. But for all of that, the price is very competitive with other planners you might purchase each year.

How I Use It

I have been using my Lux Planner since nearly the beginning of the year (this review was originally written in 2019) and I am completely sold! Not being a big fan of Google Calendar, I still use the calendar that is integrated into my email client to keep track of daily events and appointments. I transfer the next day’s events to the blank page in my planner opposite the current day and at night use them to create the plan for the next day.

Naturally, I cannot tell you how the planner will work for you. But I can tell you what I like about it so that you will have a better idea whether or not it will be a good fit for you. (No, no one has paid me. I just really like the thing!)

My favorite features include the fact that it keeps me focused without feeling overwhelmed. If I get my big three done — hey! Count it as a great day! In addition, it is flexible enough to roll with my changes, while being backward-evaluating, yet forward-focused.

So do I wish I would have had one of these while we were still educating at home? Oh my, yes. I cannot count the number of planners I went through (well, actually I could because I still have them all, but I’m not going there).

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Additional Resources

At-a-Glance Planner
My former old standby. Somehow this is the one I usually defaulted to when all else failed.

2-Step Daily Schedule
This is still the basic principle I use to keep on track.

Step 7: Smart Scheduling
How we planned our homeschool schedule.

Scheduling
The rest of our efforts in this direction….