Stress Free Holidays Using Holiday Planner

I am so ready to get into the holiday spirit! Give me all the twinkle lights, and warm drinks, and Christmas carols!

Today I want to walk you through how I set up my holiday planning binder. If you want a stress free holiday season, then you’ll want to set something like this up for yourself! Click the video below to see what I include in my holiday planner:

Here are the supplies you’ll need to make your very own holiday planning binder:

A Three Ring Binder (I used a simple ½ inch)
The Holiday Planning Printable Pack
A Three Hole Punch
Some Colorful Pens

You can click here to purchase the Holiday Planning Printable Pack if you want to use the exact same pages that I do, or you could draw up your own pages to make it totally your own!

My binder starts with monthly planning pages for October, November, and December. These pages come with some pre-filled reminders like “buy Halloween candy” and “send Christmas cards” – but you can of course add in your own holiday plans.

Next up is the Master Prep List. Think of this like a giant to-do list for the holiday season. I love giant to do lists. When I have a place to brain dump everything I need to do, it gives me peace of mind because I know I won’t forget.

I color coded my Master Prep List based on which family the plans correlated to. So, for instance, plans with my husband’s family are highlighted in green.

You can’t have a holiday season without some holiday baking! I included two copies of the holiday baking sheet. (Remember, this is a printable kit so you get to add as many or as few copies of each page as you’d like!) This is a great place to record your must-bake goodies.

The Party Prep List is a place to keep an organized brain dump of all the tasks and errands you need to complete before your big shin-dig! I used one copy to plan out what would need to be done for a Pumpkin Painting Party, and I used a second copy to list my to-dos before family comes to visit this winter.

Coordinating Thanksgiving Dinner is a huge task! The Thanksgiving Menu Planner provides a place to keep track of who is bringing what, which ingredients you already have and which you need to purchase, plus other useful info like how long it will take to cook and/or prep. (That can be extra handy to know if everyone will be sharing just one oven!)

Later in my binder I included the exact same menu planner, but in the Christmas theme to plan for Christmas meals with family.

This printable pack not only includes pages to put in your holiday planning binder but there are also box labels to keep your seasonal decor labeled and organized. Here’s how it works. First you’ll print and cut the labels. Then, you’ll number the labels, and use the Fall Decor Inventory sheet in your holiday planning binder to keep an organized list of what decor you have and which box it’s in.

I also printed out all the resources I needed to use the same system for winter decor!

One of my personal favorites in my binder is the holiday card tracker. We have dozens of loved ones who live 2,000+ miles away, so we definitely want to send holiday cards later this year. These are pages you’re going to want to hold onto after you’ve taken the time to fill them out, because next year you’ll be able to look back and have a jump start on the addresses you need for holiday cards.

Oh! Okay, so my other favorite is the gift trackers. There are actually two kinds of trackers included in the printable kit, so if the one I show below is too nuanced for your liking, you may like the other, more-spreadsheet like printable even better.

I used to draw tables very similar to this in my notebook or on scrap paper when preparing for the holidays. Each family member or friend who you’ll be giving a gift (or gifts!) to gets their own table. I needed four copies of this printable in order to fit all my family and friends! I can easily see at a glance what gifts I have for each person, and how much I’m spending over all.

They say that there’s no place like home for the holidays, and these next pages will get your home holiday ready! I’m certainly no artist, but I sketched the basic layout of our living room on the Winter Decor Blueprint. Having that out on paper is a great way to think through where the Christmas tree, floral arrangements, and other goodies will go. This page pairs great with the Winter Decor Checklist – I would’ve totally forgotten to get a tree skirt if it hadn’t been on the list!

There are so many other pages in the Holiday Planning Printable Kit that I didn’t even include in my binder: a DIY Halloween Checklist, a Winter Break Planner, a Black Friday and Cyber Monday Shopping List…

….oh! And I almost forgot about the beautiful printable gift tags that are included!