Around the Kitchen Table: Planners & other helps
Planners are my weakness during this time of year, when my thoughts are leaning into the annual calendar flip on Jan. 1. I drool over the expansive versions with pages of tiny reminder stickers, pockets for birthday cards and invitations, elegant pages with witty quotes, empty lines waiting to be filled with my daily activities and things to remember.
But my intentions always outweigh any effort to make use of all those well-meaning pages. As much as I want to be one of those super-organized people who always have their schedules at their fingertips, I am not that person.
My eldest daughter, Rachel, is a super-organized gal, but she came that way. She used to line up her stuffed animals by size and color and her play kitchen was more functional and streamlined than my own. I don’t know where she got that gene, but it wasn’t from me or my husband – his shop looks like a tornado came through it.
There is nothing as exciting as buying a new planner, unless it’s a new book to read. I am one of those overachiever types that believe if I have it written down, I can accomplish it. There are some who can do this, but as I creep closer to 70, I’m thinking it’s time to wave the white flag.
I start off like a house afire, blazing through January, keeping up with everything, even making notes of things I want to write about later (you know who you are, you do it too). By February, I start to sputter and spark sporadically, and by March, I am fizzled out.
Looking at my pile of planners paints a pretty sad picture of once glorious to-do lists, full of good intentions, but never quite living up to my expectations. Mama had a saying about good intentions and a road to somewhere I definitely didn’t want to go, but I can’t seem to squelch that burst of New Year optimism. Not that optimism is a bad thing, but sometimes it tends to color my thinking, making it harder to keep my expectations under control.
I did manage to accomplish quite a few of my goals this year, but it was often after I stopped organizing my life around my planner and bending to its need for pages filled and goals outlined in a particular fashion. I always seem to revert to my trusty yellow pad for daily lists and a desk calendar to keep up with appointments, grandkids’ recitals and plays and other “can’t forget” stuff.
By the time November rolls around, lessons learned in March are forgotten and disappear entirely when I spy the new display of planners in the stores. I can’t help myself – it’s an addiction. I know I shouldn’t, but I don’t know how to stop. Once I feel the embossed covers and admire the gilded-edged pages, the possibilities overwhelm me and I head to the checkout once again, riding on a wave of confident hope that “this year will be different.”
Something happened to me the other day, though, that may rein my “planner madness.” I opened my 2025 planner to write a Thanksgiving reminder and my thumb flipped past November and December and the planner fell open at the back, a never before visited space. Although I had purchased this particular planner because of the partial Bible verse on the front – “Be still and know…” – I hadn’t even bothered to “know my planner,” much less the rest of what that title implied. I was so eager to start my year of dreaming, scheming and doing that I hadn’t taken time to explore the treasure I held in my hands. That day, the pages revealed the real help my planner offered: Bible promises.
From Ability to Worry, promise upon promise beamed from its pages. I had overlooked what was probably the greatest benefit my planner had to offer, simply because I was too busy to explore it.
As I read verse after verse of encouragement, hope, joy and provision, I thought about the many times this past year I needed these wise words and the comfort they offered, but I was too preoccupied with my day-to-day tasks to take a look.
This new year, I will try to resist the urge to buy a planner. I think I’ll just get a bigger stack of yellow pads and the most gorgeous desk calendar I can find. It will be difficult, but I know from past experience this is all I really need. Maybe I can do it – at least until the stores put them on sale. After that, I may not be responsible. If I do succumb, the 2026 planner will have plenty to keep it company on my shelf.
However, my goal this next year is not about anything I want to accomplish. It’s about focusing on the One it is all about, the One who gives us everything we need, who gives us the strength and hope to make it every day. I want to remember in 2026 that I may “make plans, but God directs my steps.” With His planner as my guide, hopefully I will accomplish what He has for me to do in the new year.
A very Merry Christmas to you and yours and a blessed and happy New Year to all!
by Tamra M. Bolton
