I have a question for you: Are you someone who dreads seeing Christmas items before Halloween? Or do you think: Hooray! The holidays are coming?
I used to be someone who thought it was crazy that retailers filled store shelves with Christmas items before Halloween. Frankly, those items served as a reminder that my busiest time of year was fast approaching. And I didn’t want to be reminded.
The span from October 31st to January 1st is filled with big events and activities in our family. Aside from the usual Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve; both of my kids have their birthdays. This equates to a major event to plan and prepare for exactly every two weeks—with Halloween being the kick off event. This also means a whole lot of extra to-dos on my to-do list. Plus, when my kids were younger, this also meant a ton of extra stuff coming into my home—toys, books, clothes, (and did I mention toys!) and I had to find a home for all of these extra items.
Now, though, when I see holiday items in stores and my mailbox starts filling with holiday themed catalogs, I actually get excited! The holidays are coming! Hooray!
So what’s the difference between now and then? Well, now I have an organized system and a plan for this time of year, one that makes the holidays something I look forward to and enjoy all season long. One of the biggest secrets to my happy holiday plan is starting early. This is another reason I get excited when I see the holiday items filing the shelves. Now I see these items not as a reminder of stress to come, but as the chance to get a jump-start on holiday preparations.
My newsletter article this month is all about how starting early eliminates stress. This is true for all projects, but especially true for the BIG project known as the holidays! If you don’t yet subscribe to my newsletter, you can sign up here. Or, if you’d like to read the article online, it’s right here.
Hope you enjoy! Before you go though, I’d love to know: Are you ready to start getting ready for the holidays? Do you love seeing holiday items before Halloween, or does it make you want to hide your head in the sand? Thanks for sharing!
See you tomorrow for Finish It Friday…and some other fun stuff you won’t want to miss! 🙂
I’d love to attend to the “Get organized for the holidays workshop”, I would be very excited about it, but since I’m fairly young and don’t have children of my own, I always go to my parents house for the Xmas eve. So I have a question, how much of the workshop is consentrating on the home or prepping your home for Xmas and guests? If the subjects can be applied to a Xmas spent away from home then I could participate, if not then it’s probably not for me this time around. Then another question, if I would not attend this year, are you planning to held it again in future years?
I know you might not give the most objective answer 🙂 since you are selling the workshop, but I’d like to know anyway.
Thanks
-Leena
I dread seeing Holiday decor before Halloween, but I’d like that to change. My kids’ birthdays are also in this timeframe (Nov – Jan – week after New Year’s) and it gets crazier each year! They have more friends as they are in school, etc. So my ‘plan’ is to start earlier this year, and my problem has been following-thru with the plan. But I’ve got to make a change this year for it to be stress-free and to be able to enjoy the holidays with my family. I’ve been receiving your newsletters and I’m looking forward to the upcoming ones. And I’m trying the Workshop on Tuesday and can’t wait!
I am excited to open my Christmas boxes this year because I took your after holidays class year and I know everything is in order as it should be! Yay! Also, wondering if you made your joy letters…They are so cute and I would love to know exactly how you made them…Thanks!
I have the same situation as you do with two children born in mid November and December 30th. AND I have always hated Christmas (long story, you don’t want to hear). But since the kids arrived I realized I have to live with Christmas. With the job I have (I’m a MD) I have trouble getting time off around Christmas which makes the organizing harder. My solution is to start early. I love it when the Christmas stuff gets out early in the shops. I usually have the gifts done by early November, the cards are always written the first of Advent (I make sure I don’t work that weekend). I keep the decorating to a minimum, mostly Advent stuff and a tree ( for you in the US, advent stuff is four candle candleholders and stars in the windows). Since I used to live in the US I have stockings too 🙂 And I make sure that the kids birthdays are so free of Christmas stuff as they can be! They need to feel that it is their birthday and not some kind of pseudo-christmas. The trick to get it all done is – organizing!
I love planning ahead for Christmas so that during the time from Thanksgiving to New Year’s I can enjoy all the festivities, plus two birthdays and my wedding anniversary celebrations. Just today I’ve been working on some of my handmade Christmas gifts. I should have most everything made and wrapped before Thanksgiving!
It’s just not time for Christmas stuff yet. I want to savor every minute of my son’s (HS senior) football season and not rush into the next season until this one is done later in November. I wont even think about decorations until the Sunday after black Friday when I pull the tubs out and put up our tree. Having said all that, I did print my planning PDFs from when I took Get Organized for the Holidays a few years ago and I started penciling items into the 6 week sections plus I sketched my Xmas card out on the back. I’ll add names to my gift list too. This system has kept me calm and on top of the holidays ever since I took that class, so for now: Go Raiders!
Hi, Leena,
Thanks so much for your question. This workshop starts by taking a step back and thinking about what you want out of the holidays. So, even if you won’t be home on Christmas Eve or Day…you may have fun exploring ways to make the holidays meaningful up to the day when you leave to go to your parents house. Other young people without children have taken this workshop in the past, and they found it a fun way to begin the process of creating new traditions for the holiday season. If you have things to do to get ready for the holidays such as shopping for gifts, sending out holiday cards, decorating your own home, storing those decorations, etc. then there might be something in it for you. If your holiday to-do list is fairly minimal and very manageable already—then you may not need the workshop.
I don’t know for sure if I will run this workshop again. I enjoy it very much…but it really depends on interest level and enrollment to know if it makes sense to do it another year.
I think the best way to find out if it’s for you is to sample the first lesson and see what you think.
Let me know if you have other questions!
Thanks!
Aby
Hi, Johnna,
Did you take the whole workshop, or just the post holidays workshop last year? there was a bonus handout last year that talked about how to make those letters. (It’s in the workshop this year, too.) But, in a nutshell, yes I did make them. I bought the letters at Michael’s and then decoupaged them…
Let me know if you have other questions!
Thanks!
Aby
Yay, Kelly M! How awesome that you can really enjoy your son’s high school year of football and know that the holidays will fall into place! Go Raiders! 🙂
Aby
I think about Christmas year round. When my children were little, I managed to be more organized and would make several gifts, plus lots of cookies. I love Christmas and love all the decorations. If I am not ready to look at them before Halloween, I just walk on by.
Hi, Aby! Just the post holidays class with the worksheets. I had my first baby December 1st last year so no time for the whole workshop:) then! I have that scrapbook paper in my stash and I might try that project one of these days if I feel like being crafty…Lately I have not been very inspired in my scrapbooking, but I have been doing a lot of decluttering! Btw, I just finished reading Throw Out Fifty Things by Gail Blanke that I think you recommended last year and I loved it! Such an inspiring book!
@Johnna,
That is a great book! Glad you enjoyed it, too!
Aby
I think that the Christmas items come out way too early. I don’t even want to think about Christmas until after Thanksgiving. By the time I am ready to shop for Christmas stuff I have been desensitized by weeks of exposure. After a while, the pretty, shiny things lose there appeal, and I lose interest.