Every year, the holidays seem to arrive faster than we expect.
September begins with the rush of getting back into a routine. Kids go back to school. Meetings and projects pick up again after the summer. Before you know it, October arrives, Halloween decorations are everywhere, and stores are already reminding us that Thanksgiving and the December holidays aren’t far behind.
That’s why I think early October is one of the best times to start your holiday home preparation.
You’ve had a chance to settle back into your regular routine, but the holiday rush hasn’t started yet. There is still time to think about what you want your holidays to look like and take care of things now that you definitely don’t want to be dealing with on Christmas Eve.
Start With Your Vision, Not a Holiday Checklist
When we help a client prepare their home for the holidays, we don’t walk in with a standard checklist and start telling them what needs to be organized.
We start the way we start any organizing project. We walk through the home and ask what’s working and what isn’t.
Then we ask about the holidays.
What do the holidays look like in your home? Are you entertaining? Will you have overnight guests? Do you decorate? Are there traditions that are particularly important to your family? Will you be doing a lot of cooking? Are you buying gifts?
Your answers determine what needs to happen next.
There isn’t one definition of a holiday-ready home because everyone celebrates differently. Good holiday organization should support the experience you want to have.
Make Your Home Work for the Holidays
Once you know what you’re planning, you can look at your home differently.
If you’re having overnight guests and your guest room doubles as an office, perhaps that room needs some attention. If you’re hosting a family dinner, you may need to make the serving pieces, special dishes or linens you use once a year more accessible.
Sometimes holiday decluttering is part of the process. A guest room that has collected things throughout the year may need to be cleared. A kitchen may need some editing to create the space you need for cooking and entertaining.
But holiday organization isn’t always about getting rid of things.
Many of the things we use for the holidays are intentionally stored out of the way because we only use them once a year. Now is the time to pull those things out, see what you have and put what you’ll need somewhere accessible.
The goal is to make your home function for what you’re about to ask it to do.
Have a Plan, Even If It Fits on a Post-it Note
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when preparing for a move, an organizing project or the holidays is waiting too long and not having a plan.
Then suddenly everything has to happen at once.
A plan doesn’t have to be a spreadsheet with 100 tasks. It could literally be a Post-it note.
Start by writing down what needs to happen first.
If you’re hosting dinner, perhaps you need to plan the menu. What are you serving? What ingredients do you need? How much time will everything take to prepare?
If you’re having guests, are the sheets, towels and other linens they’ll need clean, fresh and ready to use?
If you decorate, where are your decorations? Do you know what you have?
Write down the things that are important to the holiday you want to have, identify the steps involved and think realistically about how much time you have to accomplish them.
Simple and methodical is usually much more effective than creating a complicated system you won’t follow.
Declutter Your Holiday Decorations Before You Decorate
Holiday decorations deserve their own version of decluttering.
Before you start decorating, take an inventory of what you have. If decorations from different holidays have been stored together, separate them so you can actually see what belongs to the holiday you’re preparing for.
Then decide what you still want.
You don’t have to put something out simply because you’ve owned it for 15 years. If you don’t like it anymore, don’t use it anymore or don’t want it as part of your holiday, it can hit the bricks.
Keep what you love and what you actually want to use.
That makes decorating easier and also gives you a much better sense of what you already own before you buy anything else.
Get Everything Out of Your Head
If thinking about all of this already makes you feel overwhelmed, start with one very simple step.
Get it out of your head.
Write down everything you think needs to happen. Use a piece of paper, your computer, your phone or your tablet. It doesn’t matter where the list lives. What matters is that you can see it.
Then ask yourself another question: Who actually needs to do each of these things?
Preparing for the holidays does not have to fall on one person. If you have family members who can take responsibility for some of the tasks, delegate them. There is no reason for one person to carry all of that emotional labor.
You can also delegate to professionals.
A professional organizer or organizing team can help declutter a home office that needs to become a guest room, rearrange items so holiday dishes and serving pieces are accessible, decorate, shop, or take other tasks off your list.
Once you can see everything that needs to happen, you can make decisions about what you need to do yourself and where you could use some help.
Make Room for the Parts of the Holidays You Actually Enjoy
For me, that’s baking cookies.
Last year I got the flu and missed something I really enjoy doing every holiday season. I like to bake cookies as gifts. They’re personal, they’re thoughtful, and perhaps best of all from a professional organizer’s perspective, they disappear. Nobody has to figure out where to store them.
This year, I’m hoping to block out the time, have all my ingredients ready and make some of the New York Times cookie recipes I’ve been eyeing.
And really, that’s what all of this preparation is supposed to accomplish.
A home that is ready for the holidays isn’t necessarily a home with every decoration perfectly placed. It’s a home that allows you to enjoy a season of family, fun, traditions and experiences that you only get once a year.
Being prepared means that when your guests arrive, you’re ready for them. When it’s time for the family meal, you know where the dishes are. You know which gifts are going to whom. The little tasks that could have been handled in October aren’t still waiting for you on Christmas Eve.
If you’re thinking, “It’s only October. I have plenty of time,” you may be fooling yourself.
Life gets in the way. We’re all busy, and the end of the year has a way of filling up quickly as everyone tries to finish everything they possibly can before January arrives.
So if there’s one thing I want you to remember about preparing your home for the holidays, it’s this:
Start now. Don’t wait.
And if you’re thinking you might need some help getting ready for the holidays, schedule an introductory call with Organize Me. We can talk about what you want your holidays to look like and how we can help you get your home ready so you have more time to enjoy them.
