With just a few days until The Holiday Weekend, you are probably going slightly insane. Travel plans, or major entertaining plans, or big party-going plans, or big Kahuna of a Christmas program plans rapidly approaching, like a (almost) head-on collision.
The most important way to declutter your holiday stress is to spend time alone, in a quiet, calm, and uncluttered place.
If you do not have such a place in your own home, well it's time to create one.
Some people simply need a soft chair facing a peaceful scene (poster, painting, window). Others, living with noisy or needy people, may require an entire room to themselves.
Determine your needs: a chair? a desk? a room? your car?
Next, take a trash bag and spend only five minutes (yes, just five) picking up junk in this area. Take the trash out.
Follow that up with a clutter purge: take another trash bag or cardboard box and declutter things that are getting in the way of your peace. Old notebooks, carton of oil paints you never use, jar of candy you won at the white elephant exchange at work last week, a spare phonebook (how many does one household need? ONE PHONEBOOK!), stack of Christmas CD's you haven't gotten around to listening to, or the parka you spent too much money on that you haven't worn since you bought it four years ago. Out they go. (Try to donate, recycle, or give away to someone else before you just trash those things.)
Finally, take a damp microfiber cloth and clean off the hard surfaces in your special place. Sweep or vacuum the floor. Light a scented candle or spray room deodorizer in it (one or two sprays won't kill you).
You should now have a place of your very own in which to destress. And it smells pretty too.
If there is too much clutter in there, or you truly have no time to do anything I suggested, then simply find a quiet church and spend a half hour sitting still in the sanctuary, absorbing the peace around you.
You can declutter your own space once the madness passes.
Have a blessed and Merry Christmas season!
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
CHRISTMAS TIPS 2010
The hectic Christmas season has descended upon us, and I have a few tips to save you time and sanity this month.
1. Instead of winding your Christmas tree lights around and around the tree, visually cut your tree in half vertically, and wind the lights from bottom to top, covering only the left side first, then the right side. (What a cool tip! I didn't invent it; I just heard about it.) Saves time and frustration, especially if you have a big tree. Or don't put up a tree this year and just enjoy everyone else's for a change. You can skip a year (or two, or twenty). You can still celebrate the birth of Christ without a decorated tree, you know.
2. If you haven't stored your summer clothes yet, and if you live where it's cold and snowy (like me), now is the time to throw out the worn, torn, dirty, or ratty summer items, and then store the remaining warm weather clothes somewhere away from your cold weather clothes. This will make room in your closet and dresser(s) for winter clothes and boots. More room means fewer wrinkled clothes, without your typical morning tug-of-war as you aggressively extract a long sleeve blouse from the crammed clothes hanging rod. Plus, you'll have more room for hiding Christmas presents in your closet.
3. Don't give clutter. Clutter is stuff that won't be used or enjoyed by the recipient. That pretty much describes 90% of the stuff on your shopping list. Pitch the list in the trash and start over. Think of only NON-CLUTTERING gifts: consumable gifts, really useful gifts, and things the recipients have actually expressed a desire to own.
4. It's kinda late to start early, so don't beat yourself up about not being so organized this Christmas, with your card list, or gift list, or (lack of) twelve dozen cookies cooling on your countertops. The traditions that Americans have created to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ are astoundingly complex. And most of them were set when women stayed home all day, caring for kids and (a small) home, without working outside jobs, commuting in maddening traffic, battling the daily onslaught of advertising messages to "buy buy BUY!,"or having to deal with the insanely complex life we call "the new millennium." Meh. Let it go. Jesus is more concerned with the state of your heart and spirit than with the state of your door wreath or gift list. Time to declutter your life of unreasonable expectations: the ones you have of yourself.
Have a blessed pre-Christmas week!
1. Instead of winding your Christmas tree lights around and around the tree, visually cut your tree in half vertically, and wind the lights from bottom to top, covering only the left side first, then the right side. (What a cool tip! I didn't invent it; I just heard about it.) Saves time and frustration, especially if you have a big tree. Or don't put up a tree this year and just enjoy everyone else's for a change. You can skip a year (or two, or twenty). You can still celebrate the birth of Christ without a decorated tree, you know.
2. If you haven't stored your summer clothes yet, and if you live where it's cold and snowy (like me), now is the time to throw out the worn, torn, dirty, or ratty summer items, and then store the remaining warm weather clothes somewhere away from your cold weather clothes. This will make room in your closet and dresser(s) for winter clothes and boots. More room means fewer wrinkled clothes, without your typical morning tug-of-war as you aggressively extract a long sleeve blouse from the crammed clothes hanging rod. Plus, you'll have more room for hiding Christmas presents in your closet.
3. Don't give clutter. Clutter is stuff that won't be used or enjoyed by the recipient. That pretty much describes 90% of the stuff on your shopping list. Pitch the list in the trash and start over. Think of only NON-CLUTTERING gifts: consumable gifts, really useful gifts, and things the recipients have actually expressed a desire to own.
4. It's kinda late to start early, so don't beat yourself up about not being so organized this Christmas, with your card list, or gift list, or (lack of) twelve dozen cookies cooling on your countertops. The traditions that Americans have created to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ are astoundingly complex. And most of them were set when women stayed home all day, caring for kids and (a small) home, without working outside jobs, commuting in maddening traffic, battling the daily onslaught of advertising messages to "buy buy BUY!,"or having to deal with the insanely complex life we call "the new millennium." Meh. Let it go. Jesus is more concerned with the state of your heart and spirit than with the state of your door wreath or gift list. Time to declutter your life of unreasonable expectations: the ones you have of yourself.
Have a blessed pre-Christmas week!
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Christmas
Merry Christmas!
To keep your home from becoming overrun with holiday gifts, do the following today:
1. Empty the trash as soon as it's ALMOST full. Don't wait until it's overflowing with wrinkled gift wrap and plastic packaging.
2. With each new gift you receive, get rid of some other thing in your home that's approximately the same size. Go put those things in a plastic bag NOW and put them in your car to donate to a thrift store on your way to work tomorrow.
3. Restrain yourself at the after Christmas sales. You don't need any more stuff to store for the next 12 months.
Blessings on you this holy season!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Micromanagement
Christmas brings out the micromanager in me like nothing else. I want to be the one to wind the glittering garlands around the tree. I want to hang each decoration just so. I want to cut out the gingerbread cookies. And I want to wrap all the gifts.
I have three kids and well-honed delegation skills, but there are things I do just because I enjoy doing them.
Some people feel this way with disposing of their junk.
If you enjoy micromanaging your junk, great! Have a ball. But if you're looking for efficient and quick disposal of your stuff, simplify your life by having two or three final destinations for your cast-offs.
For supreme decluttering efficiency, consider these three:
1. trash
2. recycling center
3. charity thrift store
Any additional options and you're complicating the issue, making more work for yourself, and cutting into your gingerbread-cookie-decorating time.
With my first client, a highly intelligent and motivated business owner, we chose three options for where to move her discards: the trash, a thrift store, and family members. Limiting the number of destinations for junk enabled us to completely declutter her three-story home in about 48 working hours. Had my client micromanaged the disposal of her cast-offs, the time it took to declutter her home would have DOUBLED.
Hear me loud and clear: micromanagement is rarely the most efficient use of either time or money. Unless you enjoy the micromanagement of your things, make disposal of your stuff quick and easy. Save your time and money to deck your halls with O.C.D.-esque perfection.
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