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!
