38: Top 6 Holiday Organizing Obstacles
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Welcome to episode 38 of Permission to be Messy. I'm your host, JoAnn Krall and today I'm talking about the top six holiday organizing obstacles. This is part two in a three-part series about holiday organization.
Last week, I talked about the three essential steps to get you organized for the holidays. And then next week I'm actually going to be talking about holiday storage. But this week I'm going to be talking about the top holiday organizing obstacles.
The first one is when you are combining households. This can be when you're getting married or remarried, but when you're taking holiday decor, and you're trying to mix them together. That can be a challenge when there's different tastes and collections. You have a few options here .You could alternate years that you decorate with each other's decor. Or you could go through each item and negotiate, which ones you'll keep. You could also use one style in one room and then a different one in another room. It's important though, to be respectful of each other's stuff, but it's also essential to pair down if you have too much stuff, especially duplicates.
Okay. The second obstacle is changing themes. Do you get bored with the same decoration theme every year? If so consider letting go of the old things if you're buying new or if you're going to keep them store each theme separately. So maybe you can do that same thing of alternating years with decorations, and then take the items that you know, that you use every year, regardless and separate them so that those are the ones that you're always going to pull out.
And the third obstacle isn't really about holiday organization, but it's clutter that results from the holidays and it's those unwanted gifts. I did do an episode, episode 28. You can go back and listen to, I talked about what to do with unwanted gifts
I think this is worth repeating. Many times we hold on to unwanted gifts out of guilt.
So when you are receiving gifts that you don't like or need embrace the good intention of the gift and separate that from the gift itself. Accept it with grace and know that it's okay to let go.
And if you have somebody that repeatedly gives you gifts that you don't enjoy. You may want to have a conversation with them.
Make it about you and tell them that you're just trying to reduce your belongings. So to me, it's perfectly acceptable to regift items, especially if it's something that, somebody else is going to want. So don't just regift to regift. But if you get something and you think this isn't for me, but I know exactly who would love it. Give it to them. The next obstacle is kids homemade decorations. These are really difficult for some people to let go of. And I get it. Some of them are really cute and,if you find yourself not decorating with them, then I really want you to think about this. What I do is I let my kids go through, my, my kids are older now, but when they were younger, I let them go through and decide what they wanted to keep. And, we do hang those ones that they've decided to keep on the tree still to this day, my daughters are in their twenties. And, just like our kids, artwork and schoolwork we tend to hold onto more than they would So let it be about them. Unless of course it's stuff that you want to keep and you want to display.
But if you find yourself not decorating with them, you can always take photos of all the ones that they've made, that they, if your kids say, I don't need any of these. I don't want them. You could take photos of them as memories. So maybe you're not displaying them each holiday, but you open up your ornaments and your decorations, and you're not going to display them, but you really enjoy them. That's a way of honoring them and it's perfectly acceptable to keep them. This is really for the people who are holding onto them out of guilt. Again, ask your kids, see what they want and let them go.
Okay. The next obstacle is finding space for new gifts.
This is a question that I get often, what do I do with all the new stuff coming in? And this is a big reason why I recommend that you purge as much as you can prior to the holidays. This is really, for those of you with young children purging their toys before the holidays can be a great way to keep your toys at bay. But it can also be a great way to keep their clothes at bay. If you have family members that are buying them clothes for the holidays, doing that purge before you won't have to worry about the space for the new gifts coming in, because you've already let go of a bunch. And the other thing I want to stress is be sure that you're not just giving gifts to exchange gifts. Sometimes we do this out of guilt. if you can, have conversations with your friends and your family about exchanges of gifts. You may find that everybody wants to maybe let go of that practice.
So the last obstacle I want to talk about is holiday cards.
These can be a huge stress point for people. On two levels. Okay. So first of all, sending them. I stopped sending cards years ago.
I did this for two reasons, it became such a difficult thing for me because my list was growing and growing and, I had to pick the right photo, get the photo, get the stamps,do up all the cards, get them out on time. And I didn't enjoy the process. And honestly, I was just sending out a picture of my family in an envelope addressed. Nothing personalized. I didn't have time to write personalized notes on each one. So I just stopped sending them all together.
So because I was spending so much money on those, I actually decided to take that money and donate it to charity each year, instead of doing the cards. And, I got a lot of kickback from people, they, a lot of people love receiving those cards with the photos and love receiving them too but it was a decision that I had to make for myself and you know what a lot of people dropped me off their list, which was probably a really relief for them. I still have people who have faithfully sent them year after year, and I appreciate them and I love them. But really with social media now. We see everybody's photos. So what I do is I do still send out cards to the people that I don't interact with online. just to catch up, and see them. But I don't send photos anymore unless I have a specific photo that they may want to see. And I will literally just put it into a card.
But I feel like I'm able to be more personable with it because I have so many less to send out. I can actually connect with people. And another thing. if you don't like the idea of not doing it anymore, I've seen people send them out at new years. I've seen people send them out in the middle of the year, which I think is cool. It's cool to get,snail mail, photos or message from friends. and you could even spread it all out through the year.
If you enjoy doing it, but doing it all at the holiday. the winter holiday time. And the stress of the holidays. Think about doing that, think about doing it at different times. it could be fun. I think if everybody did that, how cool would that be to just get cards from people all year long? I think that would be really fun.
So that might be something that you might do. Now the other side of this too, is when you receive all of these cards. I've known a lot of people over the years that feel really guilty throwing those cards away each year. So they have stacks and stacks of Christmas cards from other people. For every year.
And then other people have no problem letting them go. But if you're somebody that struggles and feels guilty. Let them go. Don't feel guilty, There may be some people that you want to keep them from every year. If they're close family and friends,But weed through them and try to minimize how many you keep, so that you're not taking up your space
So those are my top six, obstacles. for, organizing for the holidays. If you have a specific question. something else that I haven't mentioned here, reach out to me. I'm happy to cover it. or just answer your question if it's specific to you. My contact information is always in the show notes and remember next week i'm going to be talking about holiday organization. Even though we won't be organizing our holiday stuff before the holidays we can start thinking about that especially if there are items that maybe are on sale before the holidays that we may want to purchase or after the holidays we can be
So watch for that and I want to mention that Sensibly Organized is open it's to me it's your one-stop shop for getting organized giving you processes for your home your business in your life and having access to me essentially at your fingertips. In that program I cover step-by-step process for planning your organizing projects You're decluttering and organizing of your home your paper your digital your photos and then other topics as well. So when you join you get the step-by-step processes you have access to me to ask questions and I'm also going to be doing monthly office hours where you can come and ask me questions live. So i hope you'll check that out the link is in the show notes and as always I'm wishing you much progress, peace, purpose, and the permission to be messy thanks for listening.
