We have all done it – we have made the decision to take the coming year by storm and invested in planners to keep track of all that we intend to accomplish. We fill up pages in the heat of our excitement because we are going to conquer the world!
But by the end of the year that dated planner is collecting dust so we sadly discard it. Maybe next year will be better.
My current employer invests in weekly planners for the entire workforce. We have considerable turnover in our field workers so they always buy extra. When 2025 rolled around, the topic of conversation in my office concerned the impact on the environment from throwing the excess planners away.
I have gained the reputation in my office of being the one who saves things when I can (they have dubbed me “Wall-E” for my endeavors) – could I come up with a use for them?
Challenge accepted.
My first solution was simple. I began to quarter the pages to use for taking notes throughout my day. Several of my coworkers grabbed a bundle and in time our unconventional notepaper even became the doodling medium of choice among the children who visit our office. The kids run to my desk to score paper and pencils, taping their creations to my desk before they leave.
But could I do anything else? I flipped through those outdated planners and realized that the most annoying bits (the dates) were on the very top of the pages. Slice that section off and the planner becomes a spiral notebook. I grabbed a pair of scissors and a planner from the stack.
It worked.
I now have a sizable stack of unconventional notebooks. I use them for notes at work, to brainstorm potential blog posts and, most importantly to me, I use them to journal.
I even devised a way to use the top section that I snipped off of those planners. Those are being used for scrap paper at my job and for list-making at home.
I feel a bit rogueish as I use my unconventional notebooks. Since a cheap spiral notebook costs at least a dollar apiece in my area, I have the pleasure of depriving Corporate America of almost $100. I feel the joy of depriving the government of the money that they would claim in sales tax if I had obeyed the narrative and purchased standard notebooks for my journaling, and I have the satisfaction of saving these items from a landfill.
We have been conditioned to believe that repurposing the items we already have is somehow wrong. We have been conditioned to believe this because it increases corporate profit margins. The government loves the fact that we have been conditioned in this way, since everything we purchase adds to their coffers via taxes.
I propose that we give the corporations a Halloween-worthy scare this season by finding creative ways to use what we already have instead of paying for prepackaged “solutions.” We can use the money that we save to live more comfortably while denying the CEOs another yacht in the process.
What do you have in your life that you can repurpose? Please share your stories in the comments below so that we can all revel in your victory.
10 responses to “How to Repurpose a Dated Planner”
I repurpose as much as I can both because I want to save money and because that’s just how I was raised. I’m in a rush this morning and can’t think of anything specific but yeah, I’m all up for sticking it to the man!
Bwahahaha!
Good for you! It’s so nice to discover that I’m not alone in my sentiments!
My way of repurposing the calendar pages would have been cutting it up to make pages for my refillable pocket notebook. I find it outrageous how pocket notebooks are either super low quality and fall apart if you actually carry it in your pocket or are insanely expensive to the point that you are almost afraid to use them. So my solution was cheap/free pages inside a durable leather cover to protect them. It is a simple design based upon the standard size printer paper and a 3 ring punch – (quarter page and use the bottom of the punch to make one hole and then flip it to get a second hole an equal distance from the top. The outside is a leather cover with 2 Chicago screw to hold it together as a mini 2 ring binder. The pages come from a mix of the unused backs of recycled printer paper, and cutting up notebooks (or in your case planners) to make pages out of the unused pages. In the past I have taken stacks of leftover flyers for events that already passed from church to cut up and make pages as well as promotional tablets or anything that has blank and ideally lined paper to make pages out of. (If this is not clear I can send/upload and post a link to pictures.)
That is brilliant, John! And you are absolutely correct: they have gotten stupid when it comes to pricing stuff like that. Even cheap tiny mini notebooks are outrageous these days, especially considering what they are.
I would absolutely LOVE to see photos of your solution…and maybe share on here for others, if you’re willing. Please? More people need to discover that it is possible to craft solutions as opposed to always buying whatever some corporation decides is appropriate.
Back when people actually sent Christmas cards, I cut off the fronts and used them as postcards to send to friends and family the next year. Now I rarely get anything useless so would be hard pressed to find anything to repurpose.
That is brilliant! I don’t receive many cards but I will remember that trick!
Do you still write physical letters? A friend and I decided many years ago that, in honor of the fact that we communicated exclusively by snail mail after our paths separated, that we would continue the practice, so we exchange physical letters as opposed to using text or email.
Hi Annie, that’s great- I have been doing the same thing for years too! It all started when I began a new job and the office girl from the year before had bought a huge, beautiful leather bound planner and it was only a quarter used if that.
It felt criminal not to use it up, so like you I would ignore the dates and just use it as a notepad.
I was gifted a beautiful planner last Christmas which I will continue to use next year until the pages are used up. I do love the idea of cutting the pages out and into strips and putting on the fridge with a bulldog clip to use for shopping lists.
I reuse gifted candle jars, once the candle is burned to the bottom I scrape out the small bit of wax and wick from the base, wash it and have re-used these in my office as a pen holder, in the bathroom to for hair clips or cotton buds, and as small vases for flowers from the garden, or to get cuttings started.
I love reusing candle jars and other items! I mean, if you have a practical use for an item, why throw it away? It’s simply wasteful!
I absolutely hate throwing away paper! I use a Bullet Journal for everything so I don’t have dated pages, but if I came across these I’d do something similar to your tips here, or at the very least use those pages for grocery lists. It seems wrong to waste paper that came from a lovely tree!
Exactly! And there were so many of them it…disturbed me. That’s the thing about custom orders on items like that: it’s less expensive for someone to order more than they believe they will use instead of a more appropriate amount.
But it worked out. I saved them 😉