The holidays are a busy time of year. Family and friends come and go. The kids are out of school, and there’s still work to be done.
While the holidays are meant to be relaxing, they can often become a stressful time filled with gift buying, baking, and cleaning. Relaxing comes at a price, too!
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To make the holidays a little bit simpler this year, try these simple ways to keep the home looking great even when a lot is going on.
1. Stock Up Ahead of The Holidays!
One easy way to make it easy to clean, organize, and live through the holiday season is to stock up before the holidays even begin.
There are some things that you know you’ll need during the holiday season:
- Gift paper
- Gift bags
- Baking supplies
- Snacks
- Toilet paper & other household toiletries
Make a list of everything nonperishable that you will need for Christmas visits and festivities. By buying all of these things before the hustle of the holiday’s sets in, you’ll save yourself time and effort later in the season.
2. Nightly Sweep for Sanity
It’s easy to think that you’ll get to the cleaning later. But when you think this every day, you will end up putting your cleaning off until it has piled up. The longer you wait, the more stressful cleaning will become.
To save yourself from this stress, do a Nightly Sweep for Sanity.
Go through the rooms that tend to get the messiest: the kitchen, the bedroom, the kids’ rooms, and the living room. Put away everything that can be cleaned up in less than five minutes.
By putting a few minutes of cleaning into each room each night, you’ll help yourself feel like your house is in order through the holiday season.
3. Individual Tidy Baskets
Everyone in your home helps make the mess, so shouldn’t everyone also help clean it up?
Get all of your kids (and your spouse!) involved in the cleanup around the home. While they may be reluctant at first, making it a part of the daily routine will have them helping you willingly in no time.
Make each member of the family (including you!) a “Tidy Basket.” Use colorful name labels to put a name on a basket or plastic container for each family member. Children will be more likely to willingly cooperate if you have personalized name labels for your children to pick out themselves in their bin. You can even let each child add other decorations to their bin to make organization fun.
Throughout the day, put items that need to be tidied up into the baskets with the name labels. When the cleanup time comes, everyone takes their basket and puts the items away where they belong.
For extra fun, make it a race to see who can put things away from the fastest.
4. Hire a Maid
If your holiday season is crazy busy, don’t feel bad about bringing in some extra help!
Hiring a maid to clean your home one or two times throughout the holiday season can give you a much-needed break while also helping you find a fresh start in keeping things tidy. You won’t regret the rest of the cleanliness!
