Get Organized

Want to cut stress during the Christmas holiday season? Get organized! Make a Christmas planner, set aside a Christmas organizing center and try these holiday tips from Cynthia Ewer.

Post-Holiday Debriefing: Get Organized for Next Christmas

1_get_organized

It's over for another year!

Wild and woolly or sane and sedate, we've passed through the holiday season and into a new year. Breath caught, it's time to debrief.

You know debriefing, right? The astronauts do it, spies do it, pilots do it: a measured after-the fact evaluation of the mission or flight.

Smart holiday planners should do it, too--because taking time now to note what worked, what didn't will be a road map to a more organized Christmas next year. Here's how:

Five Tips to Get Organized For Next Christmas

1_christmas_planning

It's the day after Christmas, and every year at this time, the e-mails in my inbox tell the story: "I wish I'd found this site earlier!"

Each year, I hear from scores of readers who came looking for holiday help at the height of the celebration-and faced with the reality of Christmas chaos. Stumbling over our site, they see that it's possible to be organized--and joyous--during the holidays. They just wish they'd found us earlier!

So say you're starting now, the day after Christmas. What's the secret to a stress-free season? Plan ahead!

Try these five tips to get ready for next year.

Christmas Organizing Secret: Try A Tear File!

1_files

Christmas magazines and catalogs are fabulous resources for seasonal decorating, gift ideas, and Christmas recipes—but en masse, they can become too much of a good thing.

When the piles avalanche from every side table, finding an article or a recipe that caught your eye a few weeks ago can be an impossible job.

How do you keep all that good information without being crushed by stacks or drowning in paper? Answer: a set of tear files.

Simplify Season's Greetings: Using Computers To Send Christmas Cards

1_computer_christmas_cards

As an online old-timer, I can attest to this fact: few subjects stir as much controversy as computers and Christmas cards.

The questions come year after year. Should we use the computer to address the cards? Write a Christmas letter on inkjet letterhead? What about pre-printed signatures? Is it okay to use e-mail to send holiday greetings?

What's the right-and-wrong of harnessing computer technology to make it easier to send Christmas cards and holiday letters?

State of the Closet: Pre-Holiday Wardrobe Check

1_boy_getting_dressed

We’ve all experienced this seasonal panic: it's the night of the office holiday party and a spouse’s good white shirt has gone missing!

Calm the chaos with a pre-holiday wardrobe check. Assessing the State of the Closet for all family members before the holiday begins means never having to say, "It's in the wash!"

To sort out whether each family member has well-fitting and appropriate holiday-season clothing, use a lined blank page in the Christmas planner, or print a free Wardrobe Planner form from our Forms Library.

Add a name for each family member to the form, click it into the Christmas Notebook, then check the calendar to focus on the clothing needs the season will bring.

Set Up a Wrap and Mail Center for Organized Gift-Giving

1_wrapping_gift

Wrapping gifts for the holidays? Repeat after me: "This year, I won't be wrapping gifts at midnight on Christmas Eve!"

If there's a single most-underestimated holiday chore, it's gift wrapping. Supplies lie scattered throughout the house, while space and privacy are hard to come by. Translation: late-night Christmas Eve wrapping sessions.

Not this year! To lick the wrapping problem at the outset, set up a wrap and mail activity center: a dedicated space for wrapping gifts and preparing packages for mailing. With workspace, tools and supplies at hand, it’s easy to wrap as you go—and enjoy the task, without grump, grumble or hurry.

Having all gift wrap, tools and supplies in one place speeds gift wrapping and makes mailing easy. Follow these steps to set up a Gift Wrap and Mail Center:

Create a Holiday Housework Plan!

1_holiday_housework

For many families, 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!

Built upon the concept of the Magic Minimum, this rock-bottom list of must-do chores can keep life at home afloat, even during busy times.

Coupled with accountability in the form of a chore checklist, a housework plan is the secret to holiday sanity, even during the busiest days of December.

Santa Savings: Make A Holiday Budget

1_snowglobe_money

For many families, Christmas comes not once a year, but lingers on for months! Credit card bills arrive shortly after season’s end, not to be paid off until the following summer. Grocery budgets groan under the burden of holiday meals and baking supplies.

Nearly two-thirds of American families don't know the true cost of their own Christmas celebration--and if they did, they'd be shocked. That much ... for a single day?

Fight the seasonal spending spree with the financial tool of choice: a Christmas budget. Try these ideas to create--and keep!--a holiday budget to save money on Christmas.

No More Holiday House Fever: A Home Spruce-Up Exercise

1_paint_chips

This weekend's furniture ads are hard to avoid when you browse the Sunday paper--and they're symptoms of a serious holiday disorder: Pre-Holiday House Fever! Have you come down with it?

Look around the house. Is your temperature rising as you see stained carpets, smudged switch plates and faded window coverings? Gotcha!

With Christmas on the horizon, it's tempting to want to dive right in to a long list of home improvements. Stop! Wait! Biting off more than you can chew on the home front is a sure-fire recipe for holiday stress.

How to avoid going overboard with pre-holiday home improvements? Try this Holiday Home Spruce-Up exercise! It'll cut the chore list to the seasonal sweet spot: those do-able, achievable projects that will give the house a seasonal lift--without making you lose your mind.

Calendar Power: Smart Scheduling for Stress-Free Holidays

1_calendar

Viewed from a few weeks away, there’s a luxurious feeling of “plenty of time”, but as December draws near, the season’s pace quickens exponentially. Where did the time go?

Time takes on a slippery quality as the holiday season approaches. Being proactive--and early--saves time and stress as the season's pace quickens.

Take major action against the seasonal time crunch with a pre-season scheduling session. The goal: to arrange for all those little appointments that slip the mind so easily.

With the Christmas calendar as a guide, consider scheduling these important pre-season tasks:

Syndicate content