Holiday Hacks to Make Christmas Holidays Easier

These Holiday Hacks to Make the Holidays easier are a great way to relieve holiday & Christmas stress and help you enjoy more of the holidays.

Why Use Holiday Hacks?

These little Holiday hacks will help you avoid the stress that can come with all the holiday madness. I don’t know why things get so crazy to be honest but I do know that having some things in place to make things easier is always a great idea. I’m speaking to you from experience and I’m sure you probably have experience of your own. I’ve not arrived to a place where I can confidently say that I’ve mastered the holiday madness. these are just some things I try to do to make the holidays a little less stressful. Sometimes we accomplish a few of them, other times we don’t. But it always helps once we do them.

10 Holidays Hacks to Make the Holiday Easier

1. Declutter Your house – I have to tell you just in case you didn’t know, bringing in Christmas stuff to an already cluttered house would not help you mentally. Oh men, I’ve been there. For example, last year we’d moved across country. By Christmas, our stuff just wasn’t organized before the holidays no matter how hard I tried. Not like we didn’t have a little time to do so – but we just didn’t have the necessary place to put the stuff. It was a struggle. I decided to only bring out the Christmas trees (x2) and only decorate one with the children’s ornaments. The other tree was left plain with just the lights on them. My house was still in chaos and adding more stuff would have just felt way to cluttered.
2. Plan Your Décor – You might find it helpful to know what direction you want to take with your decorating. Try to work with a theme -say a color scheme such as Silver and Blue, Gold and Red, or a character theme such as a Winter Wonderland, Woodland Scenes with Reindeer, a Manger scene, etc. One year, I decided on a Pink & Gold theme so I knew when I went shopping, I was looking for pink+ gold ornaments and other decorations. Other years, I just put up whatever but that can get a little tricky. Anything you see in the store  that looks cut that you don’t actually need, you end up getting anyway to add to the pile. But if you work with a theme of some sort, then you know what you have and what else you may want to add.
3. Give Yourself Time to Decorate – If you can, give yourself a day or two to decorate, at least to add the bigger items, if you plan to decorate big (especially the yard). Then you can add the smaller stuff after. You can start inside or outside however works best. I always start inside and then move to the outdoors. I haven’t started decorating yet but I have found that spacing out the décor over weeks and weeks just makes things feel dragged and overwhelming. One year, I brough out the stuff Nov 1. A tree or two got put up inside as I like to do (not decorated, just set up and plugged in). But let me tell you, the rest of the décor sat around on the front porch for a few more weeks until we actually got to it. You can have a family day to decorate for the holidays. That’s always fun.
4. Buy Gifts Early – Give yourself enough time to shop for gifts. Some years I got that done early and other times, no. But the times I did just made gifting so much easier. Not everyone may have the funds upfront to get all their gifts early, but if you have the funds go ahead.
5. Wrap Gifts Early Enough – Oh the struggle to be hiding in the closet at mid-night wrapping gifts, hoping to have them done by Christmas morning:0 I’ve found myself here on several occasions, not good. If you have some time to wrap before, (set a day apart or a few minutes each time to wrap a few times), then it will be much easier on you.
6. Plan A-head Some Family Activities – Yes, you can certainly do some spontaneous activities but I also think it’s good to have a few ideas you want to do together. That way, you can leave some free space and also, feel like you know what you are about. lol.
7. Let Wiggle Room – You don’t want to pack too many things in your holidays. Remember the reason for the season. While it’s fun to do all the Christmas things, you may want to set aside some down time at home to do absolutely nothing. On those times, you can bake some cookies with your family, catch a holiday movie, wear fun pajamas for games or what not. But have some free, down times.
8. Plan Your Holiday Menus – Holiday food is the best but you want to have a plan. Let’s not be winging these holiday meals here. Plan your meals to help you save money, time, and also cook foods that your family and friends would enjoy.
9. Shop Groceries Early – It is a good idea to shop your holiday groceries early and any special ingredients you may need. Things run out of stock plus you want to avoid all the last minute scramble. Dry and canned ingredients can be purchased early. Freeze your meat and poultry. I like to get a ham early and keep it in the freezer.
10. Have a Plan for Clean-Up – Have some storage bins and a plan for clean-up. Where would you put the extra things you bring in? Do you have storage for the extra Christmas décor? Also, does your child or children have way too many toys? Can they (or you) part with some before bringing in the new? Or can you put away some of the old ones? That is something I have not though about before but I know it would have been helpful. Last year, we had too many things and no place to keep them. I feel like if we had stored away some of the old ones (especially the hardly played with ones) we would not have had to bring in extra bins to add to what they already had.

She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness (Proverbs 31:27).