Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How you can have LESS STRESS this Holiday Season | Clutterbug Podcast # 116

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

This time of year is insane. Decorating, shopping, wrapping, baking, cooking, parties - It can be overwhelming. Let's normalize not doing it all and let's chat about what we can do to make it less stressful.        You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can we just normalize that this time of year is insane and say that it's okay to say, I can't handle it all. I can't do it all. And there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, spend my time running around. Keeping people, please. But this is my favorite holiday. Hey, Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast.

Today, I just, I guess I want to vent to you, but I also want you to know that if you're also feeling as overwhelmed as I am, this time. a year that you're not alone. I think we can all relate to life feels sometimes like we're a circus clown juggling a bunch of balls. We're trying to juggle our career and our social life and our family and keeping the house clean and just all of the commitments and pressure we put on ourselves. And that alone can sometimes feel completely overwhelming. Like there are days on a regular week in the middle of whatever month where I'm like falling in. to bed at night and still have things on my to-do list. So when December rules around, now we have

Christmas parties and we have shopping and wrapping and baking and sending out holiday cards and 50 million holiday parties and maybe you don't have all of these things, but there's a lot of pressure on us. I feel like especially as women, there's a lot of pressure on us that we need to do all of these things. My best friend goes caroling all the time and there's pressure my mother and I was like, what are you baking? And I want to send me pictures of all your holiday baking. And of course, like, I love sending out Christmas cards. And, and, you know, are we dressing all up and matching ugly Christmas sweaters to go to this ugly Christmas party with our friends? And it's just, it's a lot. It's a lot. We have 42 people to buy for every year. We have over a dozen Christmas

parties between all of our different families and friends that we have. And even without all of that, there's so many balls to juggle. Let's not even talk about, you know, Christmas shopping and all of the people and wrapping and just decorating for Christmas and putting out outdoor lights. Anyone else feeling stressed? And I don't want you to feel stress. This isn't the point of this podcast at all. The point of this podcast is to talk about strategies to feel less stressful. What I do to feel less stressful and I am certainly not an expert here because I am peak stressed right now. I'm like full peak stressed. But there are things that I do that lighten my load, and I want to share those with you. But I also want to have a conversation with you about normalizing the fact that this is hard. We look at social media and it looks effortless.

And other people, too. Nobody wants to talk about the fact that this is hard. Oh my gosh, you baked all this from scratch and your house is amazingly decorated and it's super clean. And you're working a full-time job. How are you doing this? And, you know, we're like, oh, yeah, it's no, no big deal, which is a lie. It is a big deal. We're all working ridiculously hard. Why are we, why are we pretending that this isn't ridiculously hard and we're not stressed and that we are dropping some of our balls? I want to normalize this.

I want us to all admit that life is hard. And it's okay to struggle. Because if we're not saying this to each other, then the other people who are struggling think that there's something wrong with them that they're not good enough when the actuality is we're all on the same boat just bailing out the water and maybe from a distance other people's boats look like they're floating a little higher but trust me we're all we're all just bailing as fast as we possibly can and so there I just wanted to say that because I think even myself I'm really guilty of this I'm posting pictures of you know baking and decorating cookies and I send out Christmas cards every year and we're all matching wearing matching outfits and and God it's all I can do to do that you know and I would never want any of

my families or friends to look at that and feel bad that they're not because there are a million ways that I'm failing where they're not there's there's there's there's it's just I don't know I'm ranting I'm going on a rant but let's talk about some of the things that I do do that help me get more done this holiday season without feeling like a chicken with my head cut off without feeling so, so stressed because there is options. We can say no to things. We can say we're not decorating this year. We're not giving gifts this year. We can go on a vacation instead of doing Christmas. We can literally call our relatives and say, let's just not do a gift exchange. There are things that we can do. We can say no. But the odds are we don't want to say no to these

things. We want to be able to do it all. We want to be able to decorate cookies and hide the elf every day and have a beautifully decorated home and by loving, thoughtful gifts and attend every party and wear the ugly sweaters. We want this. But how do we get it all? How? How can we possibly do it all? And the short answer is we can't. But the long answer is we can do it all if we admit and give ourselves permission that we can do some of it badly. We can take shortcuts. So the first thing that I'm going to say to you, and I'm going to admit that I do, and I think, again, is something we should normalize, is let's be okay with giving gift cards. I would rather get a gift card. I would rather receive a gift card 90% of the time. So why do I feel so guilty giving a gift

card? I don't know. And we can dress up a gift card. We can make a cute snowman wrapper. which is super adorable that we can give a gift in. We can make a little gift basket maybe from the dollar store to put our gift card in. But we don't have to spend hours in the mall trying to find the perfect gift for all of the people that we love and cherish in our lives. Because there isn't enough time in the day. And we just might not have the capacity, the brain capacity, to think of all these special, wonderful, thoughtful gifts for everyone. and at the end of the day that is okay. It's okay because we're spending time with these loved ones

and sometimes a gift card is okay. So I'm just throwing that out there. I also think something we should normalize is it's okay to not give gifts to people. I know. This is crazy pants. All right. Kids, we want to give kids gifts. But a few years ago, my sister was struggling financially.

And I know this was really hard for her, but she reached out to me and said, can we just not exchange gifts this year and not exchange gifts for our kids? Can we get together in the new year and just have a game night together instead, like our two families? And I just, I felt like instantly so much pressure just off of my shoulders. I instantly had five less people to buy for. And she had five less people to buy for. And we got to be really excited because we were planning this really cool day that we were going to spend together, which is something we normally do anyways.

but we were, that was how we gave ourselves permission to not buy each other gifts. And now we're all doing well financially. She's doing awesome. We could afford to buy each other gifts, but we're so glad that we don't have to. My gosh. It's, it's so amazing that that is gone from us. And we don't miss it. And we don't feel pressure and we don't feel guilt.

And there's nothing but joy. And we have both had many conversations about we wish we could do this with everyone else. I wish I could say to my mom, mom, let's not exchange gifts this year. Let's go stay a night in a ski chalet instead, right, as a family. Let's take the money we spend on gifts that we buy and all the, all of that, and spend a weekend at a ski resort as a family instead. So much better. Let's make this happen.

Let's all make this happen because Christmas isn't found in a store. And I know we say this, you hear this. It's like, oh, Christmas is it, but we have so much pressure to find Christmas in a store. And I feel like it's crushing us financially, emotionally, just our time. Let's make an effort to see if there's people in your life that you can say to, hey, let's not exchange gifts this year. Let's spend time together instead or do something instead. Let's go away for the weekend instead. Let's get our nails done together instead.

dead. They are going to feel so much relief. And all it takes is one person to be brave enough to say it to another. I'm so glad my sister said that to me. And I'm so glad that I said to my stepmom and dad years ago, please stop buying my kids gifts. We don't have the space. We're full. Can you take them on a mini vacation instead? And it's been five years now that they go away to a water park hotel nearby. it's just a couple hours away and they do that every year instead of a gift and it's the best thing my kids get every year it's the one thing they talk about the most and it's clutter free and it's creating memories i just i want to encourage you to stop looking for christmas in a store all right we're moving on the other thing that i do that just alleviates so much i mean it doesn't save me time probably but it's

not even that it just sometimes i used to lay in bed at night and just think about all the people i still for and the Christmas parties and am I forgetting something and my brain would just run a mile a minute, which is exhausting. When you are stressed out, it's so exhausting. It feels like you're digging ditches all day, right? Because your brain is literally in overdrive, 24, 7 and you get sick and you get run down and you get miserable and moody. And it's exhausting physically too. You feel like you can't even get off the couch even though you haven't done anything more because your brain is exhausted. So what do we do? We brain dump. A few years ago, I started making a holiday planning binder. And this sounds fancy, but really it isn't. It's just a place where I have paper that I brain dump

all of the people I have to buy for and all of the gift ideas. So I write down like a bunch of things I could possibly get them. And then I check it off when those people are bought. And I check it off when I've wrapped for those people. In the back, I also have clear plastic sleeves where I keep all of my receipts. So I know it's all in one place. It's in my holiday planning buying. I have a calendar and a schedule of all the different parties, so I know I'm not forgetting and I don't have to like last minute and I can look at this at a glance. I have all the addresses for the people where I'm sending out gift cards. I have menu planning in there so I know what's coming up and I know different things if I have

to bake or bring something and I have recipes in there. It's all of my holiday stress in one binder and putting it down on paper immediately made me feel better. It was like a huge weight just lifted off my mind just by writing it down and knowing where it was and having a home for it. So I didn't have to worry. And I didn't even know I was worrying as much as I was worrying until I didn't have to worry anymore. And I know you're going to feel that same way. A holiday binder is just a brain dumping place where you can put all the things you're thinking about for holidays, all the things you want to do, all the people you want to buy for, all the ideas of gifts, whatever it is, a place for receipts, a place for meal planning, put in a cleaning checklist.

I don't care what you put in your holiday binder. Just get it out of your brain. If you think, oh, I should really do this or I want to do this or I can't forget that, it's too much. It's too much brain inventory. It's time to take it out and put it somewhere in a safe place where you know where it is so you can let go of the pressure of having to remember and think about it. and free up some time and space in your brain for you. So you're just not stressed out anymore. And I mean, that's probably one of the greatest things that I ever did. And the last thing I did was I really looked at getting more organized.

And this is hard to do kind of after the holidays. You kind of want to do it now while you're in it, while you're in the thick of it. Just make note of the things that are a huge pain in your butt. are you cursing yourself every year because your lights are super tangled and a knot and half of them are broken and you're like cursing as you're putting them up get a light organizer you know one of those things where you wrap your lights around and next year you'll or every year after that you'll never have to do this again i used to keep all of the original boxes my ornaments came in and some of them you know i wrapped in paper and sometimes ornaments i'd lift one out and it would roll out of the paper

and break or it was just so time consuming to take down the tree and it took up so much space and that I procrastinated doing it and it was a pain in the butt. When I finally let that go and let all the boxes go and got like a sorted ornament system that worked for me, I have the trays now, but I used to just glue solo cups to Bristol board and cardboard and put them in a bin. Save some, like I don't stress about that anymore. I don't break ornaments anymore.

It's so fast to put it up. It's so fast to take it down. It's no longer a thing because I got organized. I made a gift wrapping center. Listen, I took a bin, any bin that fits under my bed. It's a big long one, so it fits even the biggest rolls of wrapping paper. And I just threw my wrapping paper, my scissors, bows, tags, tape, everything in there. And now, first of all, I don't have wrapping clutter all over my house, which usually was in my bedroom, just making a giant mess.

But I can take it anywhere in the house and I can roll it out and I can roll it away. And I feel in control. It's like this small thing that I did that save time. space, but it made me feel more in control in an uncontrollable time. So there are things that you can do to get organized. And even if you're just making note of them this year, so you can go ahead and get these organizing systems in place to make life easier next year, it doesn't matter. It's just, it's knowing that it doesn't have to be hard, that you can take shortcuts and that you can make this time of year less stressful and still do all the amazing, magical, wonderful things

that you want to do. And I also just wanted to let you know that I'm also stressed and you're not alone. And if you feel like you can't do it all, that's okay because no one can. I love decorating cookies with my kids. I'm finding a really hard time finding the time to bake. I went to my local grocery store and I just asked the bakery there, do you have any undecorated sugar cookies? And they did. And guess what? They also had a bag of their icing already made that they would normally ice with, and I bought those. And it's amazing. Because now we get to decorate cookies, but I don't have to bake the cookies. But maybe you love baking and that's okay. What else can you let go of? Maybe you say this year I'm not putting outdoor lights on my house and that's okay. It's okay. Maybe you're

not going to go to every party. Maybe you're not sending out Christmas cards. I'm definitely not Christmas caroling because I'm singing like a dead cat. Sorry, Jess, sweet that you do that, I'm going to pass this year. And I'm not going to feel bad about it because we can't do it all. And it's okay to admit that. So thank you guys so much for listening. I'm just wishing you the most stress-free holidays. And next week I'm actually going to share a bunch of gift ideas that are clutter-free with you.

So alternatives to actually going in a store and giving a gift, things that you can give that are amazing. and people will appreciate and love, but it isn't a physical thing. So we're going to talk about that next week, and I'll see you then.