By: Margarita Cossuto
The hustle and bustle of the holiday season are upon us, and we all have so many things to do from preparing the house for the holidays, baking and cooking, making time for gift shopping, and most importantly setting aside time to enjoy the wonderful holiday spirit with family and friends. With so much to do, from what needs to get done to what you want to get done, it can be challenging to know where to begin. Feelings of overwhelm and stress can take over very quickly if we don’t prioritize and break tasks down into manageable pieces. Hopefully, I can help you ease some of the hassles that often accompany the holidays by discussing some of my favorite things, organizing and making lists!
Book your calendar: Whether you use a paper or phone calendar, take a look at it now and note all the holiday commitments that you have coming up. First, note the activities that you have to do. Think about family and friend get-togethers and outings, holiday concerts, school activities, work holiday parties, and anything else that might involve blocks of time. Next, block preparation time for these activities. For example, if you promised to bake a pie for a family dinner, jot downtime needed for baking. Once you have noted your commitments, you can see how many days you have left to do other holiday-related activities such as decorating and shopping. With any planning, making time for commitments first, or the big things makes it easier to accommodate unplanned activities and tasks that may be less critical – especially around the holidays.
Evaluate your decorations: The perfect time to assess what you have, and what you may no longer want, is when you have all your boxes of decorations out and are ready to get started decorating. Ask yourself, do you have ornaments or decorations that you no longer like? Are there any decorations that you’ve been keeping for years and just haven’t used? Do you have ornaments that have been cracked or chipped from being in storage or decorations that are broken that you keep putting away with good intentions of fixing every year? Consider donating decorations that you no longer use and discarding the ones that are broken. Not only will you free up storage space but having less the following year can make the process of decorating seem less overwhelming.
Plan for next year: Once decorations are up, an excellent way to speed up the process of decorating the following year is to take pictures of the final setup in your rooms to have as a reference. For those of us who prefer to arrange decoration the same way year after year, pictures can serve as a guide the following year. Photos can even be useful for those who would prefer to change things up every year since they can remind you of setups from previous years. Simply printing the pictures and storing them with your decorations, or saving them on your phone or computer, can be helpful.
Storing decorations: No doubt that there are many great storage options for ornaments, wreaths, trees, and wrapping paper. There are also everyday items you can use that are useful for protecting delicate ornaments and decorations. For example, cardboard wine boxes and clean egg cartons are great for fragile items. Also, save bubble wrap and packaging from delivery boxes that you receive throughout the holidays to use for packing decorations for the following year.
Simplify your gift list: In terms of gift lists for family and friends, I used to make a detailed list complete with names, gift ideas, checkboxes for purchases made, stores to purchase gifts from, and numerous color codes to help guide my progress. It worked for me for several years, but I found myself sometimes forgetting the list at home, not updating it regularly, and overbuying! For the past few years, I have been using a phone app to organize my gift lists and budget. I use The Christmas List: Easy Budget and Gift Tracking, but there are so many apps to choose from so you can find the perfect one for your needs. A phone app can save you time by allowing you to have all the information you need in the palm of your hand, and you don’t need to spend time writing, and re-writing lists, or even worse be in a store ready to shop only to realize that you have forgotten your list at home. Also, having your gift list on your phone is that you can review it while waiting at a doctor’s appointment, for example, and you can add gift ideas whenever the thought comes to you.
I hope this information has been useful to you and that you have fun with all your holiday preparations and shopping!
