Ready For The Holidays In 10 Steps

When the leaves are turning yellow and red it’s a perfect time to start thinking about the holidays:

1. Visualize your holidays

First, visualize how you’d like your holiday season to be. Who would you like to spend it with? How would the surroundings look, sound, and smell? And most importantly, how would you like to feel?

Keep this image in your mind and let it guide your decisions.

2. Plan Holiday Activities

After visualizing your ideal holiday season, it’ll be easy to start planning holiday activities. What type of activities and how many activities would you like to attend? 

If your visualized dream holidays also include relaxing at home, take that into account, and don’t overbook yourself.

If your visualized dream holiday includes happy, relaxed family members, take that into account too, and be honest about how many gatherings your children or spouse will enjoy.

With these in mind start booking tickets, sending invitations, and marking everything in your family calendar.

3. Holiday Cards

Do you enjoy sending and receiving holiday cards? If yes, this is a good time to order/buy cards. When working on the cards, get yourself into a holiday mood by lighting a candle and perhaps putting some music on.

If you don’t enjoy this tradition, or if this year is just too full and busy for you to enjoy sending out cards, then skip it. There are other ways to spread the holiday cheer and let people know you’re thinking about them.

4. Discuss Gift-Giving With Family Members

As soon as possible, discuss gift-giving with family members who tend to give excessive gifts.

Always express gratitude towards their generosity and be understanding that they want to give gifts to you or your children. 

If your child has a specific request, pass that along to a family member, or share a general need/want that your child has like ‘Anything with unicorns would be a hit!’ or ‘We’d love a new family game.’.

If you’re blessed with a grandma, for example, who loves giving gifts to your kids, consider not buying any gifts for them yourself.

If you truly don’t want or need any gifts, it’s okay to express this too, with kindness. Or you can always ask for consumables or services as gifts. 

5. Plan What Type Of Gifts You’re Giving & To Whom

Hopefully, after the gift-giving discussion, your list of gifts to buy is shorter and you can be intentional with the gifts that you do give. Try to consider what the person would love to receive, give them that and only that.

Avoid getting presents just for the sake of having more presents.

6. Check Holiday Decorations 

This is a perfect time to go through your holiday decorations and donate what doesn’t spark joy anymore.

If you didn’t use it last year, how likely are you to use it this year?

Natural materials like branches, pinecones, leaves, etc. can also be used as temporary holiday decorations that compost after the holidays. 

If you have children, you can also ask them to create something that will brighten your holiday season this year but can be recycled or composted after the holidays so there’s no need for extra storage.

7. Check Holiday Outfits

This is also a good time to go through any holiday outfits. 

Does everyone in the family have appropriate clothes for holiday gatherings?

Donate what doesn’t fit or spark joy anymore to spread the holiday cheer. 

8. Tidy Up

Now is the time to put our homes in order so that when the holidays come we’re not stressed about a messy kitchen or too full coat closet.

Time to tidy up now so that we can enjoy and relax during the holidays!

9. If Hosting, Plan Ahead 

If you’re hosting guests this holiday season, start by tidying and do what Marie Kondo recommends: tour your home as you’d see it for the first time. Doing this will help you decide which areas to focus on.

If you will need extra chairs or plates, plan where to get those. Consider borrowing if possible. If you do decide to acquire new items, try to look for multifunctional pieces that can be used in the future as well, for example, neutral plates that can work during any season and setting. 

Next, plan what to serve. Consider who will be making the food and what will be needed for that.

10. Enjoy!

Even if you don’t end up getting everything done that you intended, that’s okay! Give yourself grace. This is the season to spread love and joy. Start with yourself and enjoy the small moments that make up the season.