Oh my goodness! While the holidays are a totally wonderful time of year, a lot of the time they just feel totally overwhelming. Today, we are going to tackle how to get organized for the holidays.
As busy moms, it is so easy to feel overwhelmed during the holiday season. That sure can suck the joy out of the holidays really quickly.
Today, I’ve got 9 ideas that can help so that we don’t get overwhelmed this year. Of course, getting organized is the best way to help yourself not feel overwhelmed this year, so most of these ideas are geared toward how to get organized with free printables or other tools to help you stay on track this year.
How to Get Organized for the Holidays
1. Organize Your Calendar
I know it might seem strange to start off with how to get your calendar organized, but I’m sure you know how busy the holiday’s get. There usually is more going on and if we don’t start with keeping our calendar organized, we aren’t going to make it AT ALL. So start by taking a few minutes and either buy a calendar and the get it organized or work on getting your calendar organized.
2. Have a Little Planner Fun
Getting your calendar organized doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, it can be a lot of fun! Just add some fun holiday-themed stickers and/or washi tape and have fun with the time you are spending getting your planner organized.
I find this to not only be fun, but relaxing. I have a little planning and decorating fun in preparation for each week all year long….so you can do this year round, not just during the holidays.
3. Organize Your Holiday Decor
If you really want to be organized for the holidays, you need to get your holiday decor organized. This is the perfect time of year to start.
As you pull out your various decor throughout the year, just catalog what you have and label the boxes using this handy Holiday Storage Organization System. It is organization and cuteness all in one.
4. Get Thanksgiving Organized
Don’t let Thanksgiving creep up on you without a little bit of organization.
If you have family or friends that get together, these printables will help you organize who is coming, what they are bringing along with the full menu. That way nothing will get missed.
5 & 6. Organize Your Gift Giving
Gift giving can get disorganized and confusing REALLY quickly. It is also so easy to go over budget (if you need budgeting info. it is in that post) and that makes for stressful holidays and months to come. Instead, keep track of what you have bought, where it is being kept, and if it is wrapped or shipped with this handy gift tracker.
This is just a different version of a gift tracking printable. This one offers a little more detail in the budget area without the ability to track where you have stored the gift. It costs $0.99.
7 & 8. Try a Gift Tracking App
You can just do a search in Google Play or in the Apple App Store and find a Gift List app that you like. I still haven’t found one that has all of the features that I want because I want one that will track gifts for each person year-round, not just for Christmas.
However, this app, Christmas Gift List offers the ability to add individuals and budgets as well as a link to gifts in the list and mark them as purchased and wrapped.
A second option is another app named Christmas Gift List, this app allows you to track individuals and budgets as well. It offers the option to mark a gift as an idea or as something to buy. You can input the store where you would purchase the gift as well as the price. You can also mark who is buying that gift as well as if it is bought and wrapped.
For you numbers nerds, like me, it also offers some stats in the app.
In the full version of the app ($1.49 at the time of publishing), you can add a password to keep little eyes from seeing your lists.
It also offers the ability to keep track of gifts you may buy throughout the year without any person for them. So, if you ever buy great gift items on clearance, you can keep track of what you have in this app so that they actually get used and given out. It seems like it should have the ability to create more than one gift list(ie a birthday list), but I can’t figure it out.
9. Plan Your Tasks for the Entire Month
With this free printable, you can have all the tasks that need to get done in December on your calendar and just tackle one per day.
Some of the things on this calendar seem a little bit late to me, so I might take this idea and use it with my own calendar and my own list. Do that by making your list of tasks that need to get done during November and December and then putting one each day in your planner. Make sure to have a day or two with no tasks as well as a few totally fun tasks to make the month more fun and less stressful.
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