CIJ Day 25 Put it in Your Notebook

[Holiday Grand Plan]

CIJ Day 25 - Put it in a Notebook

Hello everyone, I’m Rebecca Van Hout and I moderate Holiday Grand Planners-Get Organized Community the official Facebook Home for the Holiday Grand Plan. I will be posting this week on the Topic of Creating your Holiday Notebook and using it to create your own ideal Holiday Season. I will post planner pages and ideas to go along with these pages

Day 1- Intro to HGP and some fun videos to visualize/think about how you want your planner to look

Day 2- Printables

Day 3- Supplies for your Holiday Binder

Day 4- Using your Holiday Binder

The first week of the Holiday Grand Plan for 2022 starts on August 28th.

In order to make the best of the content a little history is helpful for those of you who are not familiar with HGP. There are lots of holiday prep systems out there, but this is the one I’ve used for 25 years and it has really helped me create stress free holidays. Every year I do it I get even more efficient, and my home gets more organized. I just love using it so that is the system I am sharing with you. I recognize that many may not want to do all of it, so I encourage you to adapt it and make it your own.

The Holiday Grand Plan is both a cleaning plan and a holiday preparation plan which guides you through all the holiday prep from lists to wrapping, mailing and menu planning. Each week we focus on one room to clean/prep and then a suggested set of activities to prepare in advance for the holidays. This allows you to break down tasks into smaller pieces and make the experience pleasurable. Less last minute running around and frantic addressing of cards or wrapping.

Holiday Grand Plan is a holiday preparation system adapted years ago by Cynthia Ewer as the House and Holiday Plan (an abbreviated version) based on the Cleaning Grand Plan and Holiday Grand Plan developed by Katie Leckey. It started as a group back in the days of Prodigy Homelife-Get O, and then as a Yahoo Group which is still an active email group moderated by a small group. I still belong to this group but am not a moderator there. When Yahoo changed the way it works with groups making it harder to post visual content the Facebook Group was born. Cynthia Ewer has since retired and passed on the administration of the Facebook group to me to keep alive for those who still want to support each other on FB in working the Holiday Grand Plan.

The Organized Home website where Cynthia stored her pages is still active but is being migrated to another location so at some point these links will become inactive. Parts of the current site work and parts do not so I recommend saving the PDFs to your own computer so that you have access for the future. I don’t have the password to edit them so the calendar I post this week will be the undated one. You can pretty much take any calendar and write the room of the week on them so feel free to create your own to match the feel and look of your own notebook.

The lovely thing about this plan is you can customize it to make it your own and work the rooms in whatever order makes sense for you and your seasonal weather. Don’t get stuck in doing them in the official order if that doesn’t work for your life or where you live. Some of our members live in the Southern Hemisphere so the seasons won’t match, and if you live in a hot climate you may want to wait on the Garage or Front Porch until later in the fall when it’s cooler. Just keep in mind that working room by room works for everyone if you allow yourself to substitute for the rooms you do have (not all of us have Attics or Guest Rooms). I offer alternative suggestions in our Facebook group for those who don’t have those spaces.

HGP planner pages are just one way to construct a Holiday Notebook and there are all kinds of creative people out there making amazing notebooks. YouTube is a great resource. Here are a few of my favorites:

These were created with permission by a member of our FB community. She is a lot craftier than I am so I wanted you to see how cute your notebooks can be

These below aren’t HGP but they are great examples of how you can dress up your notebooks:

The Cover of my Own Notebook. I am dressing it up a bit this week and working on my own pages too as my notebook needs a refresh as well!

 

[farmerswife]

I have a plum paper Christmas notebook,but because I really like the larger size, I didn’t purchase their inserts like above, but added my own inserts, with a few of Plum Paper’s, as well as the Happy Planner Christmas inserts. I am loving it!

 

[farmerswife]

Sorry, I forgot to add the calendar that I made up on my own. I combined HGP and HHP.

 

[PamelaG]

Welcome Rebecca and thank you so much for all of this great information. I'm off to work now but will give your post the attention it deserves this evening. I love all forms of planning, especially Christmas planning!

 

[Lori K]

Thanks for this contribution! I'm on the FB page, as well, and have used the HGP as my guide for years and years. While I don't think I've ever fully completed it, I look at the HGP as a guide and "anything is better than nothing." Last year was probably the closest I got to completion, and this year my goal (as always) is to get it completed. I'm a single-person household, so the cleaning and holiday prep is all on me. So, thanks in advance for the advice and encouragement.

 

[AuntJamelle]

I'm a long time fan of the HGP! I'm looking forward to starting it again this year!

I've gradually customized the plan to our home/schedule during the last part of the year. We go camping in the Fall, for example, so I have to work around that. Swapping the order of rooms, types of spaces to focus on in a week, etc.

It's so nice to have others to chat with as the plan goes along - whether we are all working on same space or not - the ultimate goal is the same.

 

[luludou]

Thanks for all the info. Already have a Christmas notebook but it would need a refresh.

 

[Myron's Mom]

Enjoyed the videos!
I had a separate planner when I first started years ago. I stopped using it and just went solely with my weekly planner. I found it much easier to coordinate my work/ family/ Christmas life on in one place. I customize the plan to fit our needs so the order changes year to year.

 

[Holiday Grand Plan]

Nice to see what everyone else is doing with their planners!

 

[jampss]

Wonderful planners! Thanks for the inspiration!

 

[Lori K]

Just to add a little, I use the same notebook year after year. It's a 3" notebook that I found on clearance -- and it's green with a black spine. I slip a new picture into the front cover every year. I printed out the narrative for each week when I first started using the HGP back in the day and have multiples of the worksheets. I tend to keep my lists from year to year (maybe 3-5 years?), so I can go back and see what I did, what I skipped and need to attend to this year. If I skipped the baseboards last year, maybe that task needs to move up on the to-do list this year. It also has my gift ideas lists, so I'm not purchasing the same gifts I gave in previous years. And, using the Christmas Card address sheets, I can get an early count for cards and stamps.

 

[Holiday Grand Plan]

Just to add a little, I use the same notebook year after year. It's a 3" notebook that I found on clearance -- and it's green with a black spine. I slip a new picture into the front cover every year. I printed out the narrative for each week when I first started using the HGP back in the day and have multiples of the worksheets. I tend to keep my lists from year to year (maybe 3-5 years?), so I can go back and see what I did, what I skipped and need to attend to this year. If I skipped the baseboards last year, maybe that task needs to move up on the to-do list this year. It also has my gift ideas lists, so I'm not purchasing the same gifts I gave in previous years. And, using the Christmas Card address sheets, I can get an early count for cards and stamps.

That's a great tip Lori! I like the idea of starting with the areas I missed last round!