Happy Monday everyone!

I wanted to share a little planner punch hack that I recently discovered – it was really an Aha! Moment for me (maybe all of you know this already!?)

A while back, I purchased this 6 hole punch online.  I bought it on Amazon and it’s made by Rapesco.  I have to admit I was a little disappointed when it arrived because…

• first of all, I thought it was sized for A5, but the largest setting was really sized for a personal planner (I probably didn’t read the fine print closely enough)
• second, it didn’t have an easy way of lining up the pages so that the holes landed in the same place each time, so it really wasn’t working well for my personal planner either 🙁

Bummer.

I went back to punching every hole individually with my crop-o-dile (which also works but is sort of a pain).

Then one day I had a little planner epiphany (cue opera singer on a high note)…  I figured out how to get all my pages lined up perfectly with this punch and use it for my personal AND A5 size!

If you peel back the base of the punch to empty out all the little punch circles, you expose the underside of the punching mechanism and you can look through to line up the holes.  Am I the only one who didn’t get this at first??  I take an existing planner insert that already has holes punched and line it up against the one that needs punching.  Then you can just make a pen mark in the holes and then center your pen marks in the punch openings! Voila!

Here’s a little video to explain it better:

You can also apply this tip to A5 pages using the same punch… just mark where you want the holes, look through the bottom of the punch, and punch the top 3 holes first and then flip the page around and punch the bottom three holes second.

OR, If you are looking for a great A5 6-hole punch WITH an alignment guide, THIS is the one I have and recommend – no alignment hack required for this one, although it is a bit pricier.

Hope that is helpful  🙂

Tricia