Last Updated November 2022
Did you enjoy your month off from the Organize and Refine Your Home Challenge?
I’m super excited to dive into this month’s challenge topic — How to simplify your holidays.
So this is what November’s challenge topics will look like:
- Week 1 — How to simplify your holidays (modifying expectations & prioritizing activities)
- Week 2 — Holiday planning strategies
- Week 3 — Organize your holiday shopping/gift-giving
- Week 4 — Organize your holiday decor
Sound good?
Many of us have been in Holiday Mode for several weeks already, even though it’s early November. We’re gearing up to work ourselves to the bone in order to create Martha Stewart-like party spreads and Pinterest-worthy holiday decor peppered all around our homes.
And raise your hand if your family plays the “How Many Holiday Activities Can We Commit to Before Imploding?” game.
For a lot of us, the magic of the holiday season has slowly devolved into a never-ending list of extra tasks and obligations that leave us feeling depleted and longing for January 2nd.
Are you ready to stop the madness? Great! Let’s do this.
Today, I’m offering up three ways to dramatically simplify your holidays so that you can begin to look forward to the season and actually enjoy it!
How to Simplify the Holidays
1. Adjust Your Expectations and Attitude
Time to fess up. Have you ever had a Clark Griswald meltdown when your idealistic picture of the holiday crashes head-on into reality?
We need to free ourselves from the unrealistic expectations of what we think we have to do this time of year and from our mind’s picture of what the holidays should look like. Be realistic about what you can accomplish with the limited time and energy that you have and do your best to adopt a Zen attitude this season.
I know. Easier said than done!
I’ve worked very hard over the last few years to let go of my inner Clark Griswold and it truly has made a difference in how I experience the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. I urge you to work on that zen attitude. Here’s a little mantra I repeat to myself that helps me stay on track:
Repeat after me:
It won’t be perfect. I won’t be able to do everything and that’s o.k.
2. Reduce Holiday Obligations
If your family is like mine, you’ve been caught up in the vortex of doing way too much during the holiday season.
Repeat after me…“It’s o.k. NOT to do ALL THE THINGS”.
At the beginning of the holiday season, sit down and complete a brain dump of all of the holiday activities and traditions that you’ve done in the past or are thinking about doing this year. Here’s a free printable that you can use to record your brain dump:
{Click image to download}
Next, look through all of the things on that master list and identify the handful of activities/traditions that truly conjure up a magical feeling and bring you real joy. Using the Holiday Priorities worksheet (see below), list those activities in the Activities to Keep section.
Next, go through the master list a second time and highlight the activities that deplete your energy and can be classified as obligations. How many of these obligations can you eliminate from your schedule?
List the obligations that are feasible to eliminate in the Activities to Let Go section of your Holiday Priorities worksheet.
{Click image to download}
When you start to realize that there really is no mandatory list of activities that you MUST do, it’s very liberating!
Is putting up exterior lights the bane of your existence? Nix it off the list.
Despise attending the neighborhood holiday party? Say “no thank you” this year.
Overwhelmed by the thought of getting Christmas cards out? Send an e-card or nix cards altogether.
In recent years, one of the holiday obligations I chose to remove from my list was having a live 12-foot high Christmas tree in our home. I loved the experience of going to the tree farm and enjoyed the smell of fresh pine in our home. But I dreaded all of these things about it:
- hauling it in and out of the house
- securing it to the wall
- making sure it’s straight
- putting up a gazillion lights
- decorating it to perfection
- making sure it was watered each day.
After surveying my family members and learning that all but one of us didn’t mind the idea of a seven-foot artificial tree and wouldn’t be devastated about missing our annual trip to the tree farm, we made the executive decision to nix the live tree (poor Hubby went kicking and screaming, but he got over it).
I took it a step further and handed over the responsibility of decorating it to my two kiddos (adopting my Zen attitude). Does it look as fabulous as when I single-handedly spent an entire day decorating it myself? Not quite. Am I o.k. with that? Heck yea!
Time is a valuable commodity and I saved so much of it by letting the kids take charge. Of course, they enjoyed the freedom of choosing the ornaments and placing them wherever they wanted without Mom rearranging them too!
3. Create a Holiday Self Care Plan
To help you cope with the crazy demands of the holiday season, it’s crucial to make self-care a priority during the coming weeks. If you’re like me, this probably runs counter to your natural inclination to put your needs on the back burner in order to attend to the needs of others and attack your super-sized holiday To-Do list.
But Friend, you know as well as I do that if you neglect yourself, your chances of truly enjoying the season are next to nil.
Whatever it is that energizes you and lifts your spirits, schedule it into your calendar. Maybe it’s a morning walk or a pedicure, or curling up with a favorite book for a few hours each weekend.
Use the Holiday Self-Care Plan worksheet below to create a game plan for preventing holiday burnout:
{Click image to download}
Simplify Your Holidays Assignment:
1.Work on modifying your expectations and adopting a Zen attitude regarding the holiday season
2. Complete a brain dump of holiday traditions/activities
3. Identify activities to keep and activities to let go
4. Develop a holiday self-care plan
I’d love for you to share how you’ve chosen to simplify your holidays this year. What holiday obligations are you planning to let go of? Drop me a comment and let me know!
More Holiday Organization Help
- Your Holiday To Do List: 8 Holiday Prep Tasks to Do Early
- Holiday Organization and Planning Tips from Organizing Experts
- Creating a Digital Holiday Decor Inventory
- Using a Gift Tracker to Organize Holiday Shopping
- Holiday Planner
- DIY Christmas Card Display Ideas
- Gift Wrap Storage and Organization Ideas
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This post is part of the Organize and Refine Your Home Challenge
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Heidi says
Great tips! I totally need to simplify things and get organized for the holidays!
Natalie Gallagher says
Thanks Heidi! Believe me, we all do!
Sabrina Quairoli says
Great tree, Natalie, My kids are teens now so they decorate all the little 1 foot artificial trees in each of the bedrooms in the house. As for our real tree, I decided to get a Table top tree 3 feet tall for the living room and a 5 foot tree for the basement family room this year. It sounds like more work, but it really isn’t. We would normally get a larger tree and it we would have to rearrange the entire living room to fit it in. So this way it saves my back and my time. =)
Natalie Gallagher says
Sabrina,
So funny you bring up the quandry of having to rearrange the entire living room to fit a tree in. As part of my home redesign, we are about to get all new furniture in the great room, so the large Christmas tree thing will become a challenge for us as well. I love your idea of two smaller trees; I’ll have to pose that idea to the Gallagher Clan and see if it meets with their approval. Thanks!
Janet Barclay says
I find the biggest challenge to be balancing one’s own expectations with those of other family members!
Natalie Gallagher says
I hear you Janet. It is easier said than done. Sometimes we need to become comfortable with others’ feelings of disappointment and put our sanity first though.
Autumn Leopold says
Gorgeous trees Natalie! We switched to artificial a few years ago as well. Do you kids enjoy decorating? My son is seven and he will do about three ornaments and he’s bored! lol
Natalie Gallagher says
Autumn,
Thanks! My son can last about 5 minutes at decorating the tree, but my 12-year old daughter will hang in there until the end now! 🙂