Christmas Countdown Day 11: Holiday Housework Plan!

Submitted by Cynthia Ewer on November 4, 2009 - 12:50am

Christmas Countdown

By Cynthia Ewer
Editor, Organized Christmas
Author, Houseworks: How to Live Clean, Green and Organized at Home

For many of us, the Christmas season causes more than usual chaos on the home front. Do you shove stacks of mail and magazines into dark closets to hide them from drop-in visitors? Does your dinnertime schedule fall off the rails when faced with multiple evening rehearsals? Does Mount Washmore raise itself to new heights in the laundry room, only to be scaled in panic an hour before the Nativity play?

Forewarned is forearmed! A simple housework plan--and family cooperation--will keep things humming at home, holiday or not!

to do today: create a holiday housework plan

Run your mind over the low points of last year's holiday season. Chances are, a large percentage of Christmas stress arose out of disrupted household routines.

Remember? Frantic clean-up sessions before guests arrive. Late afternoon trips to the supermarket to find something, anything to cook for dinner--and fast! The desperate search for clean sheets to bed down surprise houseguests. Six dozen cookies stalled for want of a stick of butter.

Fight back! The busy Christmas season is no time to play housework catch-up. The solution is a Holiday Housework Plan. Based on the idea of a magic minimum cleaning list, the Holiday Housework Plan sees to it that bare-bones home management chores get done on even the busiest holiday weekends.

Sit down with the Christmas planner notebook and your favorite hot beverage, and list the bare minimum needed to keep household systems flowing. Dishes must be done and the kitchen tidied fairly regularly. Food must be stockpiled or purchased. Laundry systems must be adequate to the unusual demands on clothing during the season. Public areas of the house must meet minimum health and safety standards for drop-in visitors.

List only the bare minimum of necessary tasks. Forget about making beds. Bathrooms open to guests should receive some attention, but you can slide on the kids' bath or the tub in the master suite. Don't worry about windows or walls or the utility room. Just list what you must do to keep the family fed, dressed, and ready for company.

Divide your list into daily jobs and weekly ones. A sample list might look like this:

Daily:

Clean kitchen after dinner
Run 1 load of laundry
Tidy up living room

Weekly:

Vacuum entry and living room
Sweep kitchen and pantr
Shop for grocerie
Clean guest bath
Change linens and towels

Next step: delegate, delegate, delegate! Enroll all family members as Holiday Housework Helpers. Call upon school-aged children for evening kitchen clean up or tidying chores. Schedule a weekend family work time for weekly chores.

Make out a simple chore checklist, or print a Holiday Chore Checklist from the Organized Christmas Printables Library. Mark names next to each job, and post the list in a public place for accountability.

Many hands make light work! If everyone pulls together on the Holiday Housework Plan, everyone will reap the benefit of an organized home during the height of the season.