Weekly IRL Missions and Free Sidebar Printables!

As a follow up to my post last weekend about daily IRL (in real life) missions and how I am tracking them in my planner, I also created some weekly sidebar stickers for my Big Happy Planner for habits that I want to build daily. I have created a points system for each item I check off, and these points/money will get added to the earnings from my daily IRL missions each week and put into my fun money -- my fun(d).

Here is a preview of the what the sidebars look like (4 per page) -- scroll down to the bottom of this post for the download link!

The printables in this post were created using backgrounds/art from freepik. Specifically, the filenames in my google drive download link have the names of the backgrounds/art used and correspond to the list below:

• "Modern abstract background" designed by Kjpargeter / Freepik (pictured above). Used in full as a background
• "Ornamental elements collection" designed by Alvaro_Cabrera / Freepik. Parts used as ornaments for borders
• "Pastel color artistic watercolor background" designed by aviyabc / Freepik. Part used as a background
• "Soft blueabstract background" (sic) designed by balasoiu / Freepik. Part used as a background

I have included downloads for 4 different pretty versions with backgrounds or ornaments (ready to use) in .PDF format. I also included an undecorated version in .PNG format (with a transparent background) in case anyone wants to customize the missions for their own personal use. If you have suggestions for missions, let me know in the comments!

Download my weekly IRL mission free printable sidebar stickers here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1K62sdG_vAGiyp5O9xcTWlBFcH2hJH2Tk?usp=sharing

TERMS OF USE:

You are free to download for your PERSONAL USE ONLY. You may not resell, repackage, redistribute, or in anyway present any of my creations as your own. Please feel free to share these files by linking to this post directly. You may not make them available for download from another site, social platform or other media. If you use these in your planner, please link back to this post to give me credit for my work! I have tried to give credit where it is due in my printables -- if you think anything here belongs to you or was improperly attributed, please let me know.

Daily IRL Missions

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!! For the new year, I wanted to start rewarding myself for building little daily habits that are good for my physical or mental health. Lots of games that I play (or have played in the past) have daily missions that give little rewards that really incentivize working on things daily, so I thought I'd borrow that idea and create daily in-real-life (IRL) missions! For this first month, I just wrote out a list of things that I wanted to do and randomized the order, then wrote them into the January monthly spread on my Mini Happy Planner. Here's what it looks like:

I will check off daily missions as I complete them. At the end of the month, each completed daily mission is worth 50 cents toward my fun spending money (for planner stickers, washi, or gaming money). This way, I can try to keep my discretionary spending under control too!

Here are some examples of my daily missions:

• Walk 12k steps
• Read a book for 15 minutes
• Listen to music
• Read 1 academic paper (related to my work)
• Publish a blog post
• Throw away or donate 1 item
• Text an old friend to stay in touch
• Plan a happy surprise/caring thing for my husband

If this month goes well, I will make some printables for next month to make it look cuter! I could also move these into my Big Happy Planner, since my to-do list has moved out so I have the space... we will see how it works!

34 Pounds of Coins

While searching for old pennies to use in my copper penny mordant solution (another one of my works-in-progress, post coming soon!), I discovered my SO's massive coin hoard. Every day for two years, SO emptied his change into plastic tupperwares, filling up progressively larger containers. Then, dismayed by the ridiculous amount of money being held up as petty change, he stopped using cash, stored the filled buckets in a closet, and forgot about them until I asked for pennies.

Of course, I sorted through all of them for my pre-1982 copper pennies. Then, the obvious next step was to redeem the rest of these coins into, you know, some usable form of currency. I don't use enough vending machines and coin laundry to use up even just the quarters, to say nothing of the dimes, nickels, and pennies.

Problem: none of our local (i.e. within a few blocks of our apartment) bank branches have a coin counting machine, and I didn't want to haul a backbreakingly heavy sack of coins around town. The nearby Chase offered free coin wrappers as an alternative. Pros: can organize and then redeem coins into bills or checking account deposit. Cons: someone needs to manually sort, count, and roll the coins. Additional con: someone is horrible at estimating how many coins she has, and needed to make 4 trips to the bank to get enough coin wrappers.

Solution: SO and I decided that if I was willing to spend the time sorting and counting the coins, I deserved half the take. Of course, with that motivation, I immediately got to work....

Here is my workspace near the beginning of the project, with only a few finished rolls on the side. I've sorted about half of the first bucket at this point.

And this is about halfway through the project, with all of the coins sorted (but still only about 10% counted out and rolled up).

The finished result is at the top of the post. Ta-da! Now for some fun numbers.

Stash stats*

Total value (U.S. currency only): $448.39
Total weight: 34 pounds
Hours to organize: 7.5 hrs
(Implied hourly wage: $59.79/hr total, or just under $30/hr for me since I'm only keeping half)

Number of coins: 4,405

• 35 Dollars
• 1 Half-Dollar
• 1,041 Quarters
• 1,046 Dimes
• 638 Nickels
• 1,614 Pennies
• 30 Foreign coins

Number of full coin rolls: 93

• 26 Quarter Rolls ($10 = 40 coins per roll)
• 20 Dime Rolls ($5 = 50 coins per roll)
• 15 Nickel Rolls ($2 = 40 coins per roll)
• 32 Penny Rolls ($0.50 = 50 coins per roll)

*All stats exclude the pre-1982 copper pennies that I previously took out for craftsy uses.