The holidays are a GREAT time of year! They can also be overwhelming and can I go farther to say a little suffocating.
Once all of the presents are opened and the last bite of pie is eaten you can be left with just a TON of new things to find a home for. I can’t be the only one that has surveyed their living room full of wrapping paper and new toy boxes and thought “Where on earth is all of this stuff going to go?”
In the last two years, I have been a lot more proactive BEFORE Christmas to make sure that I can sit back and really enjoy the holidays with my family and I don’t end up feeling overwhelmed or suffocated when it comes to putting everything away.
Today I’m sharing with you my two top PRO TIPS when it comes to preparing your house and family for the Holidays.
Pro-Tip #1: Make sure your family knows what your gift-giving parameters are. If you do not have room for any more STUFF, make sure to be upfront and tell them. Give them ideas for things like Annual Memberships to a local attraction.
Here are some ideas for here in the Coastal Bend: The Corpus Christi Science and History Museum, Texas State Aquarium, Season tickets to the Harbor Playhouse, South Texas Botanical Gardens, The Art Museum of South Texas.
Pro-Tip #2: Do a pre-holiday purge of all of your rooms! I know the popular thing to do is to Spring Clean, but by then I will already be overwhelmed and annoyed with the clutter in my house. So, in the words of Michael Scott “if you do your Spring cleaning in January; guess what you don’t have to do in the spring? Anything.”
Basically, my process is to go room to room around the end of October or beginning of November and do a big purge, my main focus is on my kid’s rooms and the number of toys in their toy chests. This means we get rid of all of those broken or forgotten Happy Meal toys, any big toys that are broken, and then they go through and THEY pick what they would be willing to donate. We have a discussion about how we are blessed and we are called to be a blessing to others. I will be honest to say my daughter is way better at this than my son but I think despite the push back it is important for them to be involved in the process and that it will mean later down the road I won’t have tiny hoarders living in my house!
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How do you keep the holiday clutter at bay? Share your Pro-Tips with us!
