The White Rabbit had it right- “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date…” Do the holidays have you feeling like the Mad Hatter? Watch this video for strategies to help you get to and through the holidays without losing your head in the process. That should leave you smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/tcdlastmin.)
Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and Yikes! Do you need a last minute Christmas action plan? We’re releasing this video with about two weeks left until Christmas, but you could be watching this the day before for all we know, so let me help you figure this out.
So, the best thing to do is focus on gifts. You’ve probably already done all the decorating you’re going to do at this point, so lets get those most crucial things down. You don’t want to forget anybody. So let’s make a comprehensive list. The best way to organize your Christmas giving, in my opinion, is to use an Excel spreadsheet. So you can have a worksheet in that workbook for each year. So, you can refer back to previous years, it will help you re-create the list for the next year, and remember what you got everybody. Also you won’t forget people, so that’s really nice. You can keep this in Google Docs or you can put it in Dropbox and that way you will have access to that on your smart phone when you’re out shopping, which is another big advantage of doing this. So get that list together and then figure out how many gifts you have left to buy, and divide that between the number of days you’ve got left, and see how many gifts you need to buy per day, and get very realistic about what that’s going to look like for your time and effort.
Here are some gifts that people often forget. Hostess gifts are one category and also surprise emergency gifts. So there may be those people that show up, you’ve forgotten. You didn’t put them on the list, and you do need to give them something. You also may be attending a party. A great idea is to get a nice, generic gift that you can keep around in volume. So, if you have a favorite wine that you like, you can get a case of that wine, have a bottle of wine for any occasion. Or you can get a favorite book or a really beautiful journal. You can get some picture frames, or candles. There are all kinds of really lovely gifts that you can keep around like that for just this purpose. So don’t forget those.
Also, stocking stuffers are something that people tend to forget and also at the last minute they realize they kind of don’t have enough of them. So I have a video that I made, and you can see the link here on the screen, about my way of organizing stocking stuffers. It is the best way to see what you have and see whose stockings might be a little sparse so that you can fill those gaps in, and you can exactly see what to do next. So go watch that video.
Also, you’re going to need to go out now and do this shopping. Maybe you’re going to do some of it on-line, but realistically you’ll have to go out shopping a little bit. So do not go with your children. This is a terrible idea. You’re going to use so much time managing them, getting them in and out of the car. What you want to do is trade shopping time with a friend. So get a shopping buddy where you can trade off babysitting, so you can take a Saturday and she can take the Sunday and you guys can trade the kids. The kids will all play together; it’ll be great. Maybe you guys can each do some kind of Christmas craft with each other’s kids, or make some kind of Christmas candy, or something. Entertain them while one of you is out getting your stuff done. So go alone, don’t take the kids.
If you need some more tips, we have a whole playlist on holiday organizing tips that you can find here on our channel. And I will see you next time. Happy Holidays! And may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
You may have been searching for tips for last minute holiday shopping and entertaining or how to keep track of gift giving.
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