Welcome to my Stress Free Holidays series, I will be sharing some tips to reduce the amount of stress this time of year puts on all of us. Some are ones I have used, some are ones I will be instituting this year, and some I will be using in the future. If you have any great ways to reduce the amount of stress please feel free to share them with us!
Something I am instituting this year, and have already begun is to take decorating a day at a time. It is so overwhelming when you go into your storage area and pull box after box of holiday decorations out, it can take all day or weekend to get it all done! So this year instead of trying to get it all done at the same time I have split my decorations into piles based on area, type and room. Each day I decorate a little more. But before I decorate each area first I do a deep clean. All year I have been working on a whole house purge and clean and so it is pretty easy to go through each area as I get ready to decorate. I purge the room of things that we don't need, put things away that we won't need for the holidays and give it all a good scrub (wash walls, windows, vacuum up cobwebs, dusting, clean cushions, etc). The reason for the good scrub is that way when it gets to be Christmas and we are running around like crazy, the house will only need a quick cursory clean before guests arrive, therefore less stress right when the to do list is longer than the day.
So far this is working out pretty well, so far I have the living room done (and tree set up), the hallway done with the card display set up, and Munchkin's room done (mostly a purge and clean with a little decorating). Hopefully by the time this post is done we will also have the outside done and the bathroom done.
The other benefit is that it is a little more satisfactory to sit down at the end of the day, have the energy to enjoy what you accomplished and still have made progress.
So how do you decorate? Do you choose to decorate early, or later in the month? Do you get it all done at once or go slow? Do you decorate your whole house or just add a few festive touches here and there?
I find this technique works great with cleaning too. One room a day sort of thing. I prefer just getting it all done at once but sometimes my stress levels can’t take it. As for Christmas decorating, I only have two boxes of stuff. And I only decorate my living room and front porch. I’ve thought about decorating other areas of the house but we hardly go in those areas so what’s the point?
ReplyDeleteI agree, I often use this method for cleaning (and plan on using it to continue my purging with one room deep cleaned and purged each month). I decorate a large amount of our house simply because we host and many rooms are entered and used, otherwise I would decorate a lot less.
DeleteWe put our decorations out yesterday. We don't have very many, so it didn't take too long. We like to deep clean as we do it too.
ReplyDeleteIt is so nice to get that deep cleaning done now, then after the holidays when you are just exhausted, your house is all done except for basic chores.
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