Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How to Have a Happy and Stress-Free Christmas | Clutterbug Podcast # 32

Episode Date: December 20, 2017

Here is a quick tip that can help you enjoy a happy and stress free Christmas, without sacrificing the important stuff!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The holidays are stressful enough without having to worry about all the things that we want to get done. Today we're going to talk about how you can have a happier, healthier holidays with just a few tips. Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug Podcast. Today we are talking about priorities when it comes to Christmas and the holidays. and having our house holiday ready. If you're anything like me, you have this vision in your mind of what you want your house to look like or what you want to have accomplished before Christmas Eve, before the holiday begin. And in the past, I've gone overboard.

I mean, I've gone to full crazy town about the things that I thought I had to have done so I could enjoy a relaxing, peaceful Christmas. and the opposite would happen. My list was so huge. I was so overwhelmed with other Christmas things like shopping and wrapping and Christmas parties and just all the craziness that comes with the holidays that I did not have time to do half of the things on my crazy list that I've put in place. So what ended up happening was I went bananas and I was mad at myself. I was mad at my family for not helping out, I felt a lot of anxiety about the things I still had to get done. And I basically just ran around in circle screaming like a maniac, really not accomplishing very much at all. So last year,

I took a different approach. Last year, I decided instead to really prioritize Christmas. For me, it really is important to have, be on top of things, to have a pretty clean and tidy home before the holidays begin, so I don't have to get stressed out about it while I'm enjoying it. But I certainly don't have to worry about cleaning baseboards or cleaning out the fridge or, you know, scrubbing the bathtubs. That's things that aren't important. And it was hard for me to see the difference. It was hard for me to see, well, what is important and what isn't. And I was just doing everything. And then some of the important things, I was really scrambling to get done at the last minute and I was stressed about it and it was ruining the relaxation and the enjoyment that I should have been having

during this important time of year. And I was missing out on things I should have been doing, like spending, you know, time with my family leading up to the holidays, doing things like baking cookies and going sledding and all of those fun things that I say to myself I'm going to do as soon as I'm done the work. So let's talk about how we can prioritize. let's talk about how we can choose the things and how we know how to choose the things that really need to get done and what we can just say freaking forget it and it's not important and toss it aside. So here's what I'm going to suggest doing and this is what I did last year. That was really effective for me. I made a huge master list of all the things my crazy brain wanted to get done

before Christmas Eve. And of course, it was shopping and wrapping and grocery shopping. And I wanted the bathrooms clean. And I wanted the kitchen scrubbed. And I wanted to have the oven clean and the kitchen and the baseboards. And I wanted everything sparkly because my mother's coming. And it might as well be the freaking queen when my mother comes over. I panic. And my in-laws are coming. And I just, yeah, I went crazy. So I made a list of all, including all the crazy. I made a list of all. all the things in my brain that I wanted to get accomplished before, I felt like I was done and I could relax and it was obnoxious. And then I made myself choose five. Five things off that list and only five things off that list that were the most important. So if I could only get five of these

things done, what would those five be? And I know you're thinking, boy, that doesn't sound like enough. and that isn't enough. But here's the thing. Once we've accomplished those five, then we can always go back and do the others if we really want to. But let's focus on the top five first. And so here's my top five. My top five is shopping.

Well, I already have the shopping done, but that to get everything bought is my number one. Next, it's wrapping. And I always sometimes leave this to the last minute and then I'm panicking before we have to go to a party because I haven't wrapped what I need to wrap yet. So wrapping and I'm going to hopefully have that finish today. Next I need to focus on laundry. And I like to have all the laundry in the house completely cut up before Christmas.

So I don't even have to think about doing laundry over the holidays. We are traveling so much. We are traveling all the way from the 23rd until New Year's Day is where we can. come back home for the day. And we're here. I mean, we're not like always staying over. Sometimes we'll come back for a couple hours or we'll have the morning here and then we head off to another party. But I don't want to be spending the limited time we have home doing laundry. So it's really important that I have all the laundry caught up before. The other thing I really want to focus on is the bathrooms because we do people popping over. They use the bathrooms. So that should be a priority

that I focus making sure I have, you know, extra toilet paper and that it's cleanish, and that there's, it's full of hand soap and I have clean, you know, hand towels for drying. And it's just pretty presentable. And then last but not least, it's grocery shopping. I want to make sure that I have enough frozen meals that we can really carry us through the holidays if we do happen to be home. Sometimes there's unexpected illnesses and we can't go to these parties or we're home for breakfast and lunch and the last thing I want to have to do is run out and pick things up so I make a list of all the days we should be here and then I get a little bit extra of frozen things just in case something happens and then I make a list of the things we're

going to have here on Christmas day sometimes my in-laws come over sometimes my parents stop by so I might want to have hors d'oeuvres or little things that I can bring out but I try to stick to things that are frozen that I can pull out and maybe it's frozen lasagna, frozen pizzas, frozen appetizers, things like that. So I don't have to stress. I don't have to worry about cooking a big meal, cleaning up a big meal, or having to run out for the grocery store for ingredients that I've forgotten. Now, if you're hosting dinner and you're having a lot of people coming over, your grocery list obviously is going to look completely different, but the grocery shopping is still going to be a priority. So that is a priority that I make very, very top of my list.

And this is where the laziness comes in. I always also make sure that I have paper plates and plastic cutlery because sometimes I just don't want to have to worry about dishes on these days. So I plan quick, fast meals that I can just whip out and sometimes we eat on paper plates. Judge me as you will. This is about my happiness, having less stress. and just enjoying my family. That's it.

I'm at five. That means no vacuuming, no dusting, no mopping, all those things that I want to get done did not make my top five. So now what do we do? Once I've accomplished those things, now what do I do? I'm going to encourage you

before you start tackling the other things that you've put on your master list, that you take a deep breath and you make a list of the things you want to do between now and Christmas that isn't work or cleaning related. Maybe it's decorating cookies with your kids. Maybe it's driving around at night and getting hot chocolate and just looking at people's Christmas lights or sitting down as a family and having popcorn and watching some Christmas

movies. Those important things that, you know, sometimes we have in our mind that we'd love to do, but we're waiting until we get our work done or our housework done and then those things we never end up having time for but those are the things that really matter those are the things we're going to remember and our kids are going to remember and those are the things that are going to affect our happiness and that's what this is all about it's about it's about enjoying each other and feeling that joy that happiness of Christmas during the holiday. So I want you to make a list of all the things that you want to do, not the things you feel you have to do, not the work things, but the things that

you really want to do with you by yourself or your family or your spouse. And I want you to make a list of those. And before you carry on to start dusting or decluttering or going crazy about something that you feel you have to get done before your mother comes on Christmas Day, I want you to do some of those fun things on your list first. I promise you, the world will not end. I promise you that you will have a happier, healthier, and more enjoyable holiday season if we focus on the right priorities. And the best way to get there is through list making.

So I guess that's what I wanted to talk to you about today. That's what I did last year. I know if you've watched my videos, you guys have seen that I shared a Christmas holiday cleaning checklist with you in the past. I want you to take that checklist and throw it in the freaking garbage. It's insane. I mean, the things that I used to do before I could enjoy the holidays. I'm looking at them now and just thinking, what the heck?

You're not going to put on my gravestone when I die had the shiniest house at Christmas. That's absurd. I was wasting so much. time on things that do not matter and that wasted time wasn't just my wasted time I was taking that time from my family by not enjoying it with them by not doing the things that that create memories so this year we've already watched Christmas movies a few times and we're having another Christmas movie night tonight we've you know packed up in our warm clothes and got hot chocolate and walked through a lit park in our city here and just spent the night walking around

looking at Christmas lights. And those are the type of things that I've always wanted to do. But I just felt during this busy time, I never had time to do those things. And that's a shame. It really is a shame. So my priorities have shifted. And yes, it's still important to me that I have a tidy-ish home for the holidays.

It's still important to me that I'm caught up on laundry. but it isn't important that my home is perfectly clean and sparkly before people come over. That is a mistake that I've done in the past, and I don't want you to make the same one. So no matter where you are in your life, and here's the other thing, your priorities aren't going to be the same as mine. Everybody's home looks different, and everybody's priorities are going to be different. If you're already pretty clean and tidy, your priority list, your master list that you're going to create is going to look completely different than someone who's drowning in clutter and is feeling completely overwhelmed with a messy home. Your master list is going to look completely different,

but no matter what your house looks like, I still want you to only pick five things. And the five thing can't be completely declutter your home. Oh no, it has to be five small tasks that can be completed in an hour or two at most. I don't want you to feel overwhelmed. I don't want you to lose focus of what's really important this holiday season. So thank you guys so much. Have a merry, Merry Christmas. I'm going to let you go early today. I'm not going to chat your ear off. I'm going to hope that you stop listening to this podcast and grab a piece of paper and make a list of all the things you want to get done that are like work-related and all. all the things you want to get done that are fun and play-related and then prioritize them and make them happen.

You enjoy a relaxing, stress-free, and just fun holidays, and so do your family. Thanks so much, and I will see you next time.