How To Organize Your Christmas
A Few Simple Steps to Help You Manage the Holidays
Start getting ready for the Christmas holiday by getting organized. Follow these simple steps to help get your to-do list in order and alleviate some of the stress that inevitably comes along with the holidays.
Shopping
The first thing any smart shopper will do is get organized. Write down the names of each person you need to buy for in a notebook, each name on a separate page. Under each name, list that person’s interests, hobbies, sizes, favorite colors and clothing styles, etc. Be sure to mark in your notebook what you bought for whom and the year. This will help avoid overbuying for one person, under buying for another or giving the same gift to the same person twice.
Wrapping
Whether you have a family full of snoops or just one, use coordinated gift-wrap to foil their snooping. Instead of adding nametags to presents, wrap each person’s gifts in one kind of paper. Do the same for every member of your family. Only you know the color scheme. So if your resident snooper does find the gifts, they’ll never know which ones are theirs.
Gift tags can be just as unique as the gift itself. For a child’s gift, consider using a candy cane. Attach a nametag to the candy cane and affix the whole thing to the package. A round candy cane works best for this type of tag. Attach a nametag or a circular piece of construction paper to the underside of the candy ring and attach to the package. The child who receives it will be getting two gifts at once.
You can also save your old Christmas cards. Cut the front cover off the card and trim the edges in a scalloped design or with pinking shears. Fasten the front cover of the card to the package you are wrapping and label it as you would any other gift tag. Not only does it make a beautiful tag, you’ll be doing something good for the environment by not just throwing away those old cards.
After the Holidays
When you begin to pack away all of your holiday decorations, remember to start fresh. Start from scratch with empty storage containers and fill them with the items that go together. For example, one box might hold your entire set of outside lights and decorations while another might contain your wreaths and Nativity set. All tree decorations should be kept in a separate box or several boxes. The key is to keep it simple and be sure to label everything. This might seem like a lot of work while you're doing it, but you will save yourself a great deal of aggravation next Christmas when you can do your decorating in steps. Just grab the appropriate box and go! No more searching through dozens of boxes for one particular item.
When boxing up your delicate ornaments, be sure to wrap each ornament in tissue paper or good old-fashioned Kleenex. Never use newspaper for cushioning, as moisture can seep in and mar your collectibles with ink.
In order to ensure that your ornaments don’t rub together, make sure you provide plenty of cushioning between them. Save dividers from beverage cases to divide layers of ornaments or individual baubles. Also be sure to use plenty of bubble wrap between layers. No more scratched or broken ornaments!
Taking down the tree is never as much fun as putting it up, but a little extra work now will save you some time when it comes to decorating next year. Instead of throwing all your light sets into a box and allowing them to become one tangled mess, wrap them individually. Wrap each strand of lights between your hand and elbow and secure in several places with twist ties. Next year when you get set to decorate your tree, just open the boxes and the lights will be neatly arranged and ready to go.
Wrapped Christmas Gift
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