Click here for my overall setup & June half-month spread.

It’s getting to the end of the month (what!) and I figured I’d set up my July spread in my bullet journal. I am only planning to use it for monthly trackers because I have other notebooks for other things, so figure this one journal can last me a long time.

There’s a bit of a story behind the setup of this one, but I feel that as I’m getting more accustomed to my journal, I’m also learning and better understanding how I want to use it. If you just want to see the spread, here it is! My original draft and the final spread:

July’s colours were green, so I just did some basic doodles in green and left it at that. I used a light and dark green Paper Mate pen (I have this set), and a green highlighter.

I don’t plan to change the habits I’m tracking for the moment so they’re the same as last month, but I’ve written them on alternating lines on either side of the tracker so each row has a bit more breathing space. I’ll be indicating each habit done with an ‘x’, as per the x’s by my “habit tracker” title.

For July I highlighted the weekends of the month by outlining them with my dark green pen, which I felt would be helpful for myself. I went back and did the same for June with my purple pen too. The washi tape conceals a semi-private task.

Now onto the story and my August draft…

Yes, pretty late to the game but I have now hopped on board the bullet journal train. Actually I started watching BuJo videos for entertainment a few months ago because I really enjoyed seeing the creativity of YouTubers but also love seeing how people organise their lives.

But what I really found could have been helpful for me was the habit trackers and mood trackers spread. I really liked the idea of tracking my habits (and also having on paper the dates I watered my plants rather than arbitrarily remembering, “Oh, I think I watered it a couple of weeks ago.”)

I started trialling just the habit and mood trackers in mid-April on a very basic spread, and again in May… and June… before, finally, I purchased my own journal.

(I also prepped a July habit / mood tracker while I was prepping my June one, but obviously now no longer need it.)

I have separate notebooks for my devotionals/misc/blog/YouTube stuff, which I’m keeping separate because I want all of my related materials to be in one place. However, I also have a random monthly to-do list that didn’t fit in with the other notebooks as well as a period tracker which I had been tracking in yet another notebook for 7 years now, so I decided to buy a bullet journal to keep all my misc monthly stuff in one place.

What I discovered the few months I tried it:

1. I really did not need the mood tracker – my mood is typically very stable except the day or two leading up to my period where I’d get a bit more emotional.
2. I did not find it helpful to track watering my plants because I have so many at this point and they’re all on different watering schedules.
3. Using so many different colours, whilst looking pretty, is a bit of a pain in the rear to fill in everything.
4. I stuck the tracker paper my wall or on my desk so it was even more of a hassle to fill in at the end of the day because I’d have to be in the study colouring with 5 different highlighters.

Once I committed to buying a journal, I did a bit more research and realised that I could just make my habit tracker even more basic hahaha. So just one or two colours was more than enough, and I can just stick my colours of the month in the pen loop and take the journal with me to fill in before bed. I also really liked a few general tracking spreads that were inspired by other YouTubers so I incorporated some of those too.

With all that in mind, my bullet journal has been split into 2 sections: the overall trackers, and the monthly spreads. The notebook I purchased is this one from Amazon (only $9.54!) which, given the simplicity of my needs, I felt would have been perfect.