2026 Lessons Learned

I paid full price for each of these planners. There was no compensation of any kind. These are my opinions on the planners that I purchased.

We're deep enough into the year now that I feel confident sharing my opinions on my 2026 planners.

My primary planner was a brand new layout from Sterling Ink called the Complete Planner. This planner sold out twice and there are no more restocks planned from what I understand.

I bought the A5 size. This planner layout has MONTH, WEEK, 7 DAILY PAGES, WEEK, DAILIES, WEEK, DAILIES, etc. I thought I would love this because it's closer to the planner that I used previous to 2025, although that planner had no weekly pages. As it turns out, I prefer my monthly pages grouped all together. I do have the months tabbed, so it's not as if it's too hard to locate each calendar overview, but I still like them in one clump.

The vertical weeklies. These took a lot of work for me to make them usable. Using correction tape, stickers, and washi tape, I created sections for what I wanted to keep track of. Weather at the top, then word count (I keep track of what I write every day) and then meals and water. Sidebar contains sleep tracking and what books I'm reading that week.

I really like how I setup these pages and the layout is working very well for me. Well enough that even if a horizontal version is offered in the future, I would still buy the vertical. My brain can't plan in a vertical weekly, but it can keep track of the things I listed. I did need to draw lines to separate the days, though.

Things I do not like about the weekly pages. If a week is split between two months, the weekly is in there twice. It meant duplicating information which I didn't want to do and so I used the week that had the most days in the month on it, and covered the other one with stickers for decoration.

The daily pages are standard and are fine. 

This planner is a hard cover planner. I would rather have a soft cover.

My favorite things. In addition to the blank page after the month where I can setup my monthly dashboard stickers and track my monthly tasks, there is also a blank page in front of every weekly spread. This is why I bought this planner. It allows me to setup a weekly dashboard. Nothing I tried for weekly tasks worked in 2025, so I'm hoping this will. Eventually.

Lessons learned on the weekly spread? Less is more. I don't need to setup 8 different boxes. The monthly dashboard stickers I buy allow me to setup four boxes with a header. Four is enough. Going forward, I will go for minimalist on my weekly dashboard and see how that works. That's my next test. I setup a few weeks in advance, but one more week and I'll have blank spread.

Overall, I'm not sure this is my perfect planner. I'm trying a few things to make it easier to find what I'm looking for. That's my biggest issue right now. Setup was also a lot of work because I needed my tracking, not the vertical layout.

If the weekly dashboard works, I might go back to the brand I used in 2025. The Journey Planner worked for me exceptionally well. But to get the weekly dashboards, I'd have to tip in pages. That might be preferable since I like the layout in the Journey better and there's an actual meal planning section with water drops to check off, so it will be less work.

Other overall lessons: I did pick up Journey Planner in a B6 size as a secondary planner. I wanted to see if I liked the smaller footprint. I learned 1) I am definitely an A5 girlie when it comes to planners and 2) I hate keeping a duplicate planner and I have stashed the B6 journey away. I might redate it and use it for something else another year.

I'll do another post probably next week about my writing planner and my monthly planner since this is already too long.

I Have an Opinion

For someone who used to read ebooks only on her phone or on her tablet, I have developed a really interesting preference since I returned to using eReaders.

My mom had a Kindle, and after she died, I used it and then my dad used it.

Last year, I bought a Kobo Libra Colour with buttons on the side.

I read on both the Kindle and the Kobo. And you know what? I prefer using buttons to turn pages rather than touching the screen.

There it is. My weird opinion.

I don't know why I shy away from reading on a touchscreen now. When I was reading on my phone and tablet, it was all touch, there was no other option. I'm used to touchscreens. I never have a problem on any other device I own. Except my eReaders. I want buttons.

Kindle used to have a reader with buttons, but it was discontinued in 2019. I would love to see them come out with a color version WITH buttons. That seems unlikely, though.

For a while now, I've been trying to figure out why this is. I have no answers. All I know is what I like. 

Pans and Purchases

Years ago, I bought a set of pots and pans. Non-stick and red to match my kitchen accents. They remained mostly unused because I hate cooking and that didn't change just because I had pretty pots and pans.

Fast forward to when my dad moved in with me after my mom died. My dad loves to cook. Seriously. And not only did he bring his pots and pans to use, he also made a lot of use out of my set.

And the non-stick surface started to get scratched up. He never threw the pans away, but after he died, I did start throwing the messed up stuff away. I believe I blogged about the pan with a hole in it that leaked olive oil onto my gas cook top. Scared the hell out of me when I noticed. After I cooked the vegetables.

One of the pans that had to go was a nice, deep frying pan with a lid. I did a little research, picked the one I wanted, but I had to wait for it to go on sale.

It finally did. And when it arrived, I needed to assemble it. No handles were attached. Easy enough and they actually included a decent screwdriver.

One small problem. I thought the 12 inch pan was the correct size to buy. I was wrong. It's way too big. I should have ordered a 10 inch? And 8 inch? Yikes! 

The Very Late Christmas Story

As a gift to myself for Christmas, I bought an expensive stationery advent box. I'd researched different advent options and this small business created the most beautiful items I saw when I looked at the previous year's boxes.

They went on sale Aug 2nd. I hesitated because it really is an expensive indulgence and did I really need this? But I talked myself into it because it would be my one gift to myself.

I clicked the buy button.

The description on their website said shipping by Nov 17th so it would arrive in plenty of time for the countdown to Christmas. Perfect. I put it to the back of my mind and went on with life.

And then November 17th came and went without a shipping email. I waited a week, thinking maybe they're just a little behind. Still no email, so I contacted them. I received an assurance that they were just a little behind and that the boxes would be mailed out shortly.

Cool. I can wait.

And then we're into December with no notification of anything being mailed. I join the shop's Facebook group, but there's no information there about the advent box. It takes days, but finally someone else asks about the box. No one from the shop answers. Then a few days later, the post disappears. The shop shares that order questions should go via email, not the group.

Within a few days, the shop sends out an email saying that they're far behind, but that advent boxes will go out in time for Christmas.

We get deeper into December. There's no chance this box is arriving before Christmas. I email the shop again, inquiring about my box. My expensive box. The response? We posted about this in our Facebook group.

Really? The same Facebook group where you said that you didn't want order issues mentioned?

She posted that day. My email had been sent three days earlier.

To shorten the story, the box finally arrived on January 2nd, well after the advent season. I decided to make it a New Year box and opened one package a day until they were all done.

The items are beautiful. The stress of spending that much money for a box and being met with sheer silence about the order were not worth it. If she had kept me up to date with the order, I would have been fine. If she'd said hey, we're dealing with a family emergency and I won't be able to keep on top of things. I would have been fine. But there were no explanations, no transparency, and no updates.

So while this shop has beautiful stuff, I doubt I'll order from them again because the experience was so unfun.

2026 Reading Challenges

I am hoping to finish two reading challenges this year. I have them all ready to go in my reading journal. These are challenges that I failed last year.

I'm giving myself grace because both are year-long challenges and I didn't discover them until well into the year. One of them in May, the other one much later than that.

There was never a chance to get caught up and I spent a lot of time writing in 2025.

This year, I have a plan. Um, I hope because I haven't actually done it yet and it's February. My idea is to slot books ahead of time into each category. That way I know I'm reading a book that fulfills a prompt.

I've started to follow my plan a few times by looking at other readers' choices and hoping to pick one of them to fulfill that prompt myself. This isn't working real well for me. I'm thinking I just need to make my own choices and not refer to anyone else's list.

We'll see how this goes.