If you celebrate Christmas or Chanukah or Kwanza, etc. – no matter what holiday it is, there are additional details to which you have to attend. You may have to buy gifts, you may have to attend parties, and you may be hosting parties of your own. These tips are geared toward Christmas, but apply to whatever holiday you celebrate.
Christmas Organization Tips & Tricks:
- The List. I’ve discussed before how having reusable lists is a working parents best investment. Why reinvent the wheel every year? Once you’ve created your lists, then it’s where you start each year. Open the document up, and save it with this year in its name. Then start editing.
My list is an Excel spreadsheet, but you could have a Google sheet or any other document that works for you. I highly recommend that you make an electronic list for ease of editing year to year.
My spreadsheet currently has five tabs, so it’s really five lists in one. The first two tabs are the most useful and generic, the other three are more specific to my holiday, but I included them as examples of other lists you may use:
Children’s gifts – who is getting what (and from whom – I’ll update if a gift has been bought by a family member), how much we’ve spent on each child, what gifts are “Santa” gifts, and what gifts are for a grab, etc.- Christmas Shopping List- the list of everyone on my shopping list with an idea or two of what I’m going to buy for them. Don’t forget teachers, bus drivers, child care
providers, and people you are tipping – hair stylist, cleaning lady, etc. Put EVERYONE on the list, you can always take them off. - Baking – I added this one recently. I always bake a bunch of cookies and sweets, and I realized that I needed to better plan the baking activities
- Christmas Eve – when I host my family for dinner. I have the menu, my shopping list, and short “to do” list.
- Shopping Plan – I also added this one recently, this helps me organize my shopping day with where I plan to shop for which gift.
All five of these tabs represent activities that I do year after year, and it’s so helpful to have them documented so that I don’t have to try to remember them.
- The Calendar. I actually start this activity after Christmas. I always got my children’s day care calendar for the upcoming year in December, so I would be in the calendar updating vacations and
holidays anyway. At the same time, I would mark my calendar for the activities that I knew would be happening – going to buy the Christmas tree, when we are going to decorate the tree, when I am taking vacation for shopping and day(s) around the holidays, tentative dates for annual parties, etc. This really helps when the holidays are suddenly here and your hit with invitations, etc., that way, you don’t over schedule. - The Shopping Day. For the first few Christmases with children, I fought the good fight and shopped during my lunch hour and
after work. I tried to avoid weekends due to the crowds, but of course I had to shop on weekends too. I finally decided that it just was too crazy, and decided to take a weekday vacation day to shop. With my lists in hand (and now on my phone!), DH and I hit the stores early on a Friday (I like to take Friday so that we have the weekend to get some of the presents wrapped and/or organized) early in December. We usually get 75-80% of the brick and mortar shopping done, and then I’m not as stressed all through the month trying to shop during and after work. - Cyber Shopping. Well, duh, I know this one’s obvious, but have to remind everyone to take
advantage of clicking away and having gifts delivered to you. But, not only gifts, but other items too – decorations, ingredients (I bought peppermint Kisses on Amazon last year because I couldn’t find them in the stores.) If you don’t have Amazon Prime, now would be the time to sign up for the free trial. If you are still squeamish about ordering/paying online (please tell me you are not!), then sign up for a PayPal account – it will provide you the layer of security.
I hope that you can use some of these tips & tricks to make your holiday more organized and less stressful. What’s your favorite tip for staying organized during the holidays?
