How to Organize Your Home for the Holidays – 5 Simple Steps
The key is to plan simply.
Here’s 5 simple steps for how to organize your home for the holidays.
1. Write it down
- Get it out of your head and on paper
- Use a notebook with a section for “Holiday”
Confession: I learned this the hard way. Every year I put 1000 mini lights on our fresh Christmas tree. A few years in, I learned some pro tips to make the lights and tree dazzle.
Trouble was, I would forget what those tips were some 345 days later. So I started taking notes and leaving those notes packed with my stored lights.
When its light stringing time, I have the reminder notes that get me off to the right start.
2. Run a mental movie
- Imagine how you would love your home to look during the holiday season
- Imagine being a guest and going through the activities
- Write down specific tasks and notes to add to your Holiday Notebook.
Here’s a few examples to get you started.
- Food you want to make
- Outside lights checked
- Rooms to tidy
- Music compiled
3. Get the family involved early
Taking on too much and doing most of it yourself adds to holiday ho hum. Instead, gather the troops for holiday organizing. By putting things away now it will be easier to maintain in time for the holidays.
- Delegate tasks and chores
- Do a family early evening pickup
- Each person puts away anything left out that is his or hers in a room or rooms
- Next each person puts away three things that are the “room’s” (so not owned by any one person). They put these away whether he or she used them. This solves the “It wasn’t me!” in the case of kids insisting they did not leave out the TV remotes or milk in the kitchen.
- Make a Holiday Job Jar
- List each chore on paper – for a job well done:
- Watch a family Christmas movie together
- Allow kids to stay up 15 minutes extra on a school night
- Bake holiday cookies
- List each chore on paper – for a job well done:
You don’t have to organize and prepare your whole house. Stick to the public rooms people will be in. Kids’ rooms can have doors closed.
4. Decorate early
We put up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. It means we can feel relaxed about decorating, plus we get to enjoy our decorations for over a month.
5. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
Holiday time can be about impressing others or it can be about enjoying time with those we love.
- Create a theme for family gifts
- One year I gave soft scarves to my family and their significant others
- Go the gift card route
How to organize your home for the holidays comes down to simplifying and planning.
BONUS: Think ahead for next year
- Pack decorations labeling them by the room they go in for easy decorating next year.
- We re-box or wrap all our decorations in tissue paper and affix a blue label: “Downstairs Bathroom”
- Dining room decorations are an orange label: “Dining Room”, etc.
Still feeling as though getting your home organized for the holidays is just too much?
I work virtually all over the world coaching people step-by-step to get organized for the holidays and beyond. Local? I do in-person organizing. I can help you enjoy and love the holidays again. Get a free consult for my Holiday Special: Holiday Happiness Made Simple.
Sweet advice!
Simplify, simplify, simplify is the absolute BEST!
Happy holidays 🙂
Thank so much! I love simplicity! Happiest of holidays to you Sweets!
i especially like #2 (i actually utilize this “mental movie” trick for many scenarios!). organizing for the holidays will be quite different for me this year. we recently moved and are in the middle of renovating, so we’re only living in one small part of the house at this point. i think cleaning/fixing/painting not-quite-ready rooms may be at the top of the list this year. oh, and putting in a kitchen! (haha) sticking reminder notes in with the christmas lights makes a lot of sense – i think i’ll do that for next year.
Aww I know this Christmas is challenging…think of all the great stories you’ll be telling of That First Christmas when you, your hubby and the boys all had paintbrushes and wall patch and all you wanted for Christmas is a new kitchen. Sticking reminder notes in with the lights was a learned tip…lol a whole year goes by and I could not for the life of me recall which end do I start with first…thus the note enclosed with the lights…now it saves me every time. And yes, I have to read the note every time…;-)
Great post and just in time Jul’s. I love your idea of running a ‘mental movie’, definitely doing that today. Also having a Christmas notebook – I love any excuse for a new notebook so off to do that today! 😉
I love a new notebook and a mental movie as well…haha!
I’m starting to feel the holiday overwhelm kick in. Thanks for this post, I really need to create your advice and make one single holiday note book! So far I have notes on my phone, in a note book and on post-it’s, yikes!
My pleasure to help! Here’s another tip, Jen; when you get your single notebook, simply stick many post-its onto a single page in the notebook, you’ll have your notes in one place and can move them to sections they best belong. You won’t have to take time to transpose them.
Oh my goodness, do I love this post, Jul’s!! As always you provide a litany of wonderful ideas!! I really love the 3 things that belong to a room idea!! Great post, as usual! I think I’m going to try to decorate early tip for a change!
Happy to hear you found my ideas helpful and let me know how the decorating early goes as well as the 3 things belonging to a room!