The holiday season is a really busy time! From gifts and decorations to greeting cards, school plays, vacations, outings, and so much more…there are lots of little details that, while making the season oh-so-merry and bright, can also be really frazzling and stressful. One of my favorite ways to stay stress-free during the holiday season is to use a Holiday Planner. Not only does it really help to get to do items out of my head and down onto paper, but some simple trackers and checklists ensure nothing gets forgotten or overlooked (which means I can actually enjoy all the festivities)! Today, I want to show you how to assemble the ultimate Holiday Planner (that you can pull out year after year), so you too can save time and stress this holiday season (as well as all the seasons to come)!

Pink Peppermint Printable Holiday Party Planner Cover

Why Assemble a Holiday Planner?

There’s this funny thing about the winter holidays: they come around every single year! And as such, many of us do the same things (e.g., same decor, same cookies, same outings, etc) year after year after year to celebrate. Yet, I have a hunch that many of us “start from scratch” every time Black Friday rolls around and the Christmas season officially begins.

Oftentimes…baking the cookies, finding the stockings, sending out the cards, and visiting all the holiday events…feels like an all-out scramble, doesn’t it?!?

Holiday Party Planner

But what if, every year, you had a quick-reference “road map” that contained all your favorite traditions, to-dos, recipes, and ideas in one easy-to-grab binder? What if you had pre-filled checklists, ready-to-go gift trackers, and a fillable holiday budget at your fingertips so you can kick off the holiday on top of it all…instead of playing catch up from day one!

In short, assembling a Holiday Planner (that you can pull out year after year) will help you organize every aspect of your holiday so you can feel less stressed and more merry…all season long!

How to Assemble the Ultimate Holiday Planner

Assembling a Holiday Planner isn’t hard (especially since I have all the trackers, worksheets, and checklists ready for you to print and go!) Make your planner once, and you’ll have a system to reference for years to come!

Christmas Planner on a white desk
Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!

Materials Needed

Step 1 – Pick a Holiday Planner Cover

Start by picking a cover for your Holiday/Christmas Planner. Pick something that is fun and festive and that is easy-to-spot off your shelf or inside your decor tubs as the holiday season approaches.

My Printable Holiday Planner Kit includes three fun covers to choose from, one featuring an editable text field where you can type in your own family name! Once you have a cover picked out, print it onto white cardstock and slide into the front of your 3-ring binder.

Set of three holiday planners on a white table

Curious to see how I made an “extra wide” binder cover? Full instructions HERE!

Step 2 – Make the Holiday Planner Sections

Next, you’ll want to split your Holiday Planner into sections. This not only helps you keep various kinds of information separate, but it also makes it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for.

While you can organize your planner in any way that makes the most sense for your particular holiday celebrations, here is what I recommend at a minimum:

  • Food & Drink
  • Decorations
  • Guests & Travel
  • Gifts & Cards
  • Schedules & Budget

My Printable Holiday Planner Kit includes ready-to-print divider pages for each of these sections…

Colorful tabbed dividers for a Holiday Planner

…or you can use one of the 17 included pattern pages to create your own custom dividers! Other sections you might want to include are:

  • Holiday Party
  • Holiday Traditions
  • Advent Preparations
  • Crafts and Projects
Colorful holiday patterns

You can certainly use off-the-shelf binder dividers to create tabs for your sections. But if you’d like to just add simple tabs to the printable pattern pages (as shown below), you can also use this tab punch and these tab stickers to make quick stick-on versions.

If you need help making your own binder tabs, see here: Make Your Own Cute Binders Dividers

Printable Holiday Planner tabbed dividers with striped cover

Step 3 – Fill Up Your Holiday Planner

Once you have the framework of your Holiday Planner system assembled, then you just print out any trackers, worksheets, checklists, spreadsheet, or calendars that you need for your specific holiday planning! While I provide over 100 different holiday-planning worksheets in my ready-to-print kit, you can include any freebies and other finds you like from around the web or that were passed down to you!

Christmas to do list with red and green checkboxes

Inside the Printable Holiday/Christmas Planner Kit

The Printable Holiday Planner Kit features over 100 printable pages to help you plan and organize every detail of your holiday season. Before I show you the different sections/pages in more detail, here are some important features:

  • Fully Editable – Every checklist, recipe card, calendar, and worksheet has fillable text boxes. So you can type out these pages, print, and edit anytime as needed.
  • Color-Coded – The pages in each section are color-coordinated to match the category cover sheet and are tied together by iconic holiday symbols in each corner (shown below).
  • Print What You Need – Whether you want to print everything or only the specific pages you need, this system is totally customizable so you can create the time-saving resource YOU need!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit
Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!

Part 1 – Food & Drink

All the pink pages are designed to help you brainstorm, plan, and track everything related to holiday food! From planning out your holiday meal to keeping track of which cookies you’re making for who, the pink pages include recipe cards, shopping lists, and baking planners to pull it all together!

Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit

I may have gotten a little carried away with giving you options for tracking your holiday baking, including no less than 11 different worksheets. If you do a lot of holiday baking or give lots of treats as gifts, these planning pages are sure to help you keep it all straight!

Holiday Meal Checklist shown with pencil

The editable recipe cards are available in all 6 colors and are a great way to include recipes with gifted treats or save family favorites in your holiday binder!

Printed Christmas Recipe Cards

Part 2 – Holiday Decorations

All the green pages are designed to help you plan, organize, and store your holiday decorations!

Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit

I personally love the Decor By Room checklists. They are perfect for breaking down holiday decorating into manageable chunks!

Holiday decorations checklist with green pencil

When you’re ready to pack up your decor and stow it away for next year, the Decor Inventory pages and coordinating Holiday Decor Storage Labels (below) will help you track what you have and where everything gets stored so you can easily find it again next year!

Printed Holiday Decor Box storage labels

Part 3 – Travel & Guests

Whether you’re traveling for the holiday or hosting guests in your own home, the turquoise pages include checklists and calendars to help track all the reservations, best routes, attractions, travel timeline, and more!

Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit

The lighter turquoise pages focus on holiday travel and include several different Holiday Travel Planners, editable Packing Lists, and Trip Itinerary sheets.

Guest Tracker

The darker turquoise pages help you track all the guests coming into town, as well as schedules, activities, travel arrangements, etc!

Part 4 – Gifts & Cards

All the red pages are designed to help you brainstorm, budget, and shop for gifts, as well as organize your holiday card-sending process!

Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit

I’ve included four different gift trackers. My favorite is the one shown below; and I use it in lots of different ways. Some boxes are labeled by person, while other are labeled by store to help me track what needs to be bought from where. These could also double as Wish Lists: just have each family member fill out their own box with the items they are hoping to find under the tree!

Holiday Gift Tracker

Four of the most handy pages in this entire kit are the 2-page Black Friday Shopping Guide and the 2-page Cyber Monday Shopping Guide. Print them out in multiples to help you plan out your entire weekend of money-saving shopping!

Cyber Monday Shopping Guide

The rest of the red pages are dedicated to helping you organize your holiday card operation!

Holiday Card Checklist

From a comprehensive checklist to two different options for recording mailing addresses, these worksheets will ensure not a single card gets lost along the way!

Part 5 – Holiday Party Planner

The darker red pages are all dedicated to holiday party planning. I essentially took the best and most useful aspects of my Printable Party Planner and streamlined them to create a series of worksheets to help you host any holiday celebration!

Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit

Whether you are hosting an intimate family party or a bash for the whole street, these pages can help you decide every festive detail!

Holiday Party Menu Planner

Part 6 – Schedules & Holiday Budget

In the final section of the planner, I include various calendars and schedules.

Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit

From full-month spreads (for November and December) to help you track your holiday season at a glance, to single-day, weekly, and two-week planners, there are tons of options for planning out your baking, wrapping, partying, and more!

This section also includes the budget planning pages. I’ve included both simple grey spreadsheets as well as fully color-coordinated budget sheets if you want to track your spending by category.

Printed Holiday Budget shown with pencil

Patterned Pages

Last but not least, this kit also includes a bunch of extra goodies to make your Holiday Planner cute and even more useful!

ALL 17 of the fresh and festive patterns seen throughout this post are included. Print them out as filler pages for your planner, use one as an alternative planner cover, or use them in your holiday crafting.

Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit

Holiday To-Do Lists

In addition to dedicated checklists for each section shown above,  this kit also includes some general checklists. These are perfect if you don’t want an entire binder system but just need some pages to keep you on track all season long:

Get ready to have your most organized Christmas ever with this comprehensive, fully editable, mix-and-match Printable Holiday Planner!
Page examples from the Printable Holiday Planner Kit

The “Bucket List” type pages would be great behind a “Traditions” tab in your planner. Add to them year-after-year to assemble comprehensive lists you can reference over and over!

Favorite Holiday Movies Checklist

Coordinating Add-Ons!

Finally…this Printable Holiday Planner Kit fully coordinates with an array of additional printable goodies that are sure to help make your holiday season MORE fun and LESS stressful, including:

Get This Kit!

Ready to assemble your Holiday Planner? Click HERE to get the entire Printable Holiday/Christmas Planner bundle!

Have an All Access Pass to The Organization Toolbox? Login HERE to get this download!


Assembling a Holiday Planner is something that will payoff for years to come. But my guess is that you don’t need any more complication this Christmas season (or any season!) As such, it is my hope that my comprehensive printable planning kit allows you to quickly and easily assemble your binder, so that you have the time and energy to celebrate and spend time doing what the holidays truly mean to you!

See You Soon!
Megan