1980s Uncalendar Planner

I used a few of these little planners when I was in college in the late 1980s. In the photo below, which includes some of my other planners from that time, you can see a black and brown Uncalendar, and the red one in the top left with a post-it on top is also an Uncalendar.

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The planners had a horizontal format:

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Size comparison below vs. a pocket Moleskine:
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Inside, there were undated weekly and monthly layouts, as well as some other custom pages for planning and task tracking:

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These were my favorite notebooks for a while. I loved the size, the format, the thickness, the plastic comb binding, and even the somewhat cheesy plastic covers, which sometimes included a clear pocket on the outside in addition to the ones on the inside that held the calendar booklet in. One of them still has a rather amusing clipping that I’d tucked in there!

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It’s interesting to look at these now, as the system almost seems like a proto-Bullet Journal format. There were instructional pages at the beginning to explain the method:

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I assumed this brand was a now-extinct relic of the ’80s, but the company, People Systems Inc.,  is actually still around, and is still a family-owned independent business! You can still buy various Uncalendar planners, though they seem to have discontinued this pocket version, which is a shame. Maybe they’ll bring it back someday!

 

6 thoughts on “1980s Uncalendar Planner”

  1. My college bookstore sold these, and I used them for several years. They were effective planning tools, and I’ll have to check out the company’s page to see what they have these days.

  2. Your stationery nostalgia trip is really sending me on one, too. . . ! It wasn’t that long ago that I finally recycled a huge box of old planners from the ’80s and ’90s — but not without looking through them. So weird to recall people I had appointments with or see my to-do lists!

    – Tina

  3. I used the Uncalendar planner for a while, when the pages were laid out in muted blue and tan, but now the layouts are multicolored, which I find distracting and unnecessary. However, I still use their 3-ring half-size (5 1/2 x 8 1/2) binder, which is just right for my DayTimer monthly pages and a few tabbed sections, and also has an internal pocket on the inside front cover.

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