|
Follow these tips and you'll find your holiday season to be much less stressful. By Ramona Creel (Page 2)
(Continued from page 1) We chose to go on a trip by ourselves -- cross-country skiing in the middle of nowhere in Colorado -- instead of spending the holidays with our family. And since we were going out of town so early in December, we only put up minimal decorations and didn’t send any holiday cards.
We worried and worried that we were going to OFFEND someone with our crass insensitivity -- but do you know what happened? Everyone we talked to (family included) said, “Boy, I wish I had the courage to do that!” It turned out that 90% of the people we knew had considered doing the same thing at one point in time, but had never been able to walk away from the pressure of the “have to’s.”
Well, we had a marvelous time (one of our best Christmases ever), everyone loved hearing about our trip, and we now take a holiday vacation every other year.
FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT
But just because you don’t want to do it, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have to get done at all. And, just because it needs to be done, doesn’t mean that you have to do it (that’s the reverse corollary!)
Start by sitting down with your family and compare everyone’s “wants” and “don’t wants” for the season.
This is the time for a little BARGAINING. If you love baking and shopping for presents but really don’t enjoy decorating the house, see if your spouse or kids have decorating marked as a priority on their lists. At the very least, you might find someone else who feels neutral about a chore that you completely despise! The holidays are an excellent time to learn the fine art of NEGOTIATING!
And if you decide as a group that you really do want something done but no one wants to do it, consider HIRING someone else to do it for you, if you can afford it. If you like having the house decorated but hate putting up lights and garland, find a florist or interior designer that can take on that particular chore. The same is true of many holiday “obligations.”
If you don’t like cooking, have your holiday meal catered or buy a pre-cooked meal from the local deli or eat out. If you love giving goodies to friends but don’t have time to bake, buy “homemade” cookies from the local bakery. Have a housekeeper give your home a good cleaning before your out-of-town guests arrive. In this age of convenience and SERVICE-ORIENTED businesses, I guarantee that you can find someone who is willing to do almost anything for a fee!
DON’T MAKE IT A CHORE
Unfortunately, many of us have turned the holiday season into just one more chore to be tackled. It’s as though the holidays have been transformed into an intensified “to-do list” -- baking, shopping, wrapping, visiting – no wonder the holidays stress people out so badly! But it doesn’t have to be that way -- it’s all about PERSPECTIVE.
Do you remember when you were a kid and one of your parents introduced you to the “clean up your room” game? Maybe you rushed around trying to see how quickly you could get everything put away -- or perhaps you sang and danced while you straightened up. Cleaning up was fun, until you learned to look at it as a CHORE -- something to be tolerated, something that “had” to be done but wasn’t in any way enjoyable.
Holiday tasks are the same way. At our house, we turn every holiday “chore” into a PARTY. We have a house decorating party, where we invite our friends to help out, put on some Christmas music, and give everyone spiked eggnog. We take our holiday cards to the local Starbucks and spend a very pleasant afternoon listening to carols, drinking hot cocoa, and chatting as we write out our holiday greetings. We even make gift-wrapping fun (my husband and I compete to see who can get their gifts wrapped the fastest -- just like when we were 6 years old!)
The point is, you can make anything FUN, if you create the right mood and the right frame of mind. So think about how you can put a cheery spin on at least one “chore” this year -- you might be surprised what a good time you have!
LOWER THE BAR
In a world where we seem to think that perfection can be attained if we just work hard enough, we often feel a tremendous pressure to outdo ourselves during the holidays.
Each year, we want to buy more gifts (or more expensive gifts) than last year, to host the most elaborate party of the season, to make the house look more festive than any other on the block. And in the process of trying to OUTDO everyone else in the world, we end up missing out on the real meaning of the holidays. We no longer have time to spend with our loved ones, because we are on an insane quest to create the PERFECT holiday.
This year, why not be a little bit REALISTIC about your holiday? Accept right from the start that things may not go perfectly -- and the harder you try to mold your holidays exactly as you had planned, the less likely they are to cooperate. And quite frankly, sometimes less is more. Instead of attending a different party full of strangers every night, why not pick two or three gatherings where you will be surrounded by people you love?
Rather than planning a seven-course meal serving 75 people, wouldn’t a small potluck dinner with your 10 best friends mean more to you? Do you really need to buy dozens of gifts for your kids, or would they be happy with just a few things they really wanted? Maybe this year, it’s time to focus on the QUALITY of your experiences instead of the QUANTITY.
<<1 Page 2
Ramona Creel is a Professional Organizer and the founder of OnlineOrganizing.com -- a web-based one-stop shop offering everything that you need to get organized at home or at work. At OnlineOrganizing.com, you may get a referral to an organizer near you, shop for the latest organizing products, get tons of free tips, and even learn how to become a professional organizer or build your existing organizing business. And if you would like to read more articles about organizing your life or building your business, get a free subscription to the "Get Organized" and "Organized For A Living" newsletters. Please visit http://www.OnlineOrganizing.com or contact Ramona directly at mailto:ramona@onlineorganizing.com for more information.
|
