Meet the Insert Keeper: 5 Ways to Use It
You bought the inserts. You love the inserts. You have absolutely every intention of using the inserts.
So why are half of them in a drawer, a few tucked into your planner box, and at least one hiding in a bag you haven't carried in three weeks?
Or maybe your planner is getting a little chunky because you keep adding inserts. (We understand. There are so many good ones.)
Well, friends, we'd like you to meet the Laurel Denise Insert Keeper.
It's a place to organize, store, and use your planner inserts. But as our team discovered during a recent episode of OMG Planners, it can do a whole lot more than that.
Lolly, Nancy, and Mabby from Team Laurel Denise got together to explore all the ways to use one. Nancy and Mabby even shared their personal setups, and let's just say we all left with a few new ideas.
Here are five of our favorites!
What Is a Laurel Denise Insert Keeper?
Think of an Insert Keeper as a Laurel Denise planner without the preprinted planning pages.
It has a cover, our familiar binding, and four reinforced dividers to help you organize your inserts into sections. It comes in four physical sizes to fit compatible Laurel Denise inserts, with shared sizing for 2 & 5 and 3 & 6.
You decide what goes inside. Store extra inserts, save completed pages, or build an entirely separate planning space for something you love.
5 Ways to Use Your Insert Keeper
1. Give Your Extra Inserts a Home
Those extra checklists, dot grid pages, meeting notes, and plastic inserts you've been collecting? They can all live together in your Insert Keeper.
Mabby keeps hers stocked with inserts she might need throughout the workday. When she needs extra notes or checklists, she grabs a page and pops it into her everyday planner.
Everything stays together, and she doesn't have to carry every insert in her planner all the time.
2. Save the Pages You Want to Keep
Some planner pages are worth hanging on to. Completed projects, meeting notes, reading lists, or that very satisfying checklist you finally finished.
Nancy keeps a separate Insert Keeper at home for her completed inserts. It's a little archive of things she wants to save without carrying them around every day.
3. Give Your Everyday Planner Some Breathing Room
If your planner is getting a little chunky, you don't necessarily need to remove your favorite inserts.
Try moving older monthly and weekly pages into an Insert Keeper instead.
Your past plans stay together, your everyday planner has more room, and you can always revisit those pages when you need them.
4. Make a Home for Your Favorite Things to Track
This is where things got really fun during our YouTube episode.
Nancy is creating a separate Insert Keeper for her gratitude, quarterly reflections, books, movies, restaurants, exercise, and more.
Instead of fitting all those things into her everyday planner, she's giving them their own space.
Imagine having a whole book of your reading history, garden notes, or favorite memories to look back on year after year.
5. Create a Whole Separate Planner for Part of Your Life
Okay, Mabby may have convinced all of us that we need a home planner.
She's using her Insert Keeper to track household projects, maintenance, purchases, warranties, and all those things you need to remember but probably won't until approximately six years from now.
Like when you replaced your dishwasher. Or how old your HVAC system is.
She keeps her long-term home records together and pops active project pages into her everyday planner when she's working on something.
And your separate planner doesn't have to be about your house! Think book clubs, wellness tracking, gardening, creative projects, or anything else that deserves its own little space.
Want to See How We Actually Use Our Insert Keepers?
Lolly, Nancy, and Mabby are taking you inside their Insert Keepers in this episode of OMG Planners.
We're showing you how to add inserts, organize your dividers, decide how much to keep inside, and create your very own planning setup.
And yes, there may have been some borrowing of each other's Insert Keepers before we even finished filming.
Grab your favorite beverage and come hang out with us!
Watch the full Insert Keeper episode on YouTube
Your Insert Keeper can be as simple or as specialized as you want. Start with the inserts you already have and see where the ideas take you.
