6 Holiday Organizing Tips to Help Keep Your Home Tidy
November 14, 2019The holidays are notorious for being a busy time. If you’re used to hosting during the holidays, then your home can get even busier. Keeping your home tidy with the extra decoration, items, and people flowing in and out can be a huge challenge. Here are some holiday organizing tips to help keep your home tidy when things start getting busy:
1. Start Early and Make a Plan
One of the best holiday organizing tips is to make a plan and start planning for the holidays early. If you know you’re going to be hosting people for the holidays, start figuring out what you need and how you’ll handle all the extra people and stuff ahead of time. You can even use a calendar to block out prep time for shopping, cleaning, and even rest days to help keep yourself sane during a crazy schedule.
This can help you keep track of arrivals and departures, plan how much space you’ll need to have available, how much food you’ll need, etc. From there, you can also come up with specific strategies for corralling extra coats, luggage, etc. Planning ahead can also help you handle clean up after the holidays better too. If you know your holiday decorations end up being a mess every year, you can start figuring out some holiday decoration storage ideas that work for you and the decorations you’ll be putting up, and eventually taking down, this year.
2. Write Things Down and Make Lists
As you’re planning for the holidays, make some sort of record of what you need to get, do, make, etc. Whether you write it down, keep a list on your phone, or something else, get it out of your head and into a list you can reference. This can help reduce some stress because you can reference and update lists instead of trying to remember everything and manage it on the go.
You can also categorize your lists to help organize your time and tasks better. Gift shopping, food shopping, cleaning, cooking, travel plans, decorating, and more can all become a list of tasks to do, things to get, or things to remember to help you manage the holidays. Plus, knowing what you need to do will also help you create a schedule that works for you.
3. Break Preparation Into Manageable Chunks
Once you know what you have to do and how long you have to do it, you can break things up into manageable chunks, figure out who is responsible for what, and schedule things out. This can help you get everything done without having to rush or get stressed by the looming deadlines. If you know you need to decorate, clean, and go shopping, you can break these up into multiple shopping trips or one big one.
Then, you can clean and decorate room-by-room or dedicate chunks of time to cleaning or decorating until it gets done. What works best for you may be different from what works best for someone else, but taking the time to plan ahead and then break big tasks into something more manageable can help you get a better handle on the holidays.
4. Take Inventory As You Go
As you prepare for the holidays, it’s a good time to take inventory of what you have. You can figure out what you have, get rid of things you don’t need or use anymore, and create a list of things you’ll need before, during, and after the holidays based on what you have.
This is a great way to keep your collection of decorations under control as well as keeping an eye on your cleaning supplies, things you’ll need for sprucing up guest bathrooms, and more. Creating a list of things you’ll need to replenish after the holidays based on what you have now can also help make the post-holiday recovery a little less stressful.
5. Give Guests a Tour
A lot of clutter can build up when you have guests. Some of it is just a byproduct of more people and things in the house. Some of it is also due to guests not being as familiar with your home as you are. Some clutter will be unavoidable, but you can likely cut down on a lot of it, or at least help contain it, by giving your guests a tour of the home.
Not only does this help them become more familiar and comfortable in your home, but it also gives you a chance to point out where they can store/find their things. Showing guests where their coats, shoes, etc. can hang out and be easily found can help keep those items contained to a certain area instead of ending up all over your home. Plus, it makes it easier for your guests to navigate your home and find things when they need them.
6. Tidy Up Periodically Throughout the Holidays
Clutter will build up throughout the holidays. It’s a busy time, so it’s unavoidable. But, you can keep things manageable by using some holiday organizing tips and by periodically cleaning up throughout the holidays to keep things from getting out of hand.
You can also enlist your guests to help. You may be hosting them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t lend you a hand when you’re prepping meals, cleaning up afterward, or trying to corral some clutter.
Holidays are a joyful time, but they can also be stressful and have the potential to leave your house a complete mess once they are over. Instead of letting mess add to the stress, use these holiday organizing tips to help keep your home tidy during the holidays. Your home may not be perfectly tidy and organized during the holidays, but it doesn’t have to get out of hand either.