I used to measure the success of my holidays by how full my calendar was. The above image is from a holiday journal from about 10 years when my kids were younger. Cookie exchanges, white elephant gift exchanges and neighborhood gatherings filled the blocks on my calendar, but did little to fill my heart with holiday cheer. Instead they brought on the stress of having one more thing to do, at a time of year that … Read More
Today we will focus on Editing your gift giving. One facet of my life that has changed significantly since becoming a professional organizer is how many gifts I give. I spend many hours each week working with people who have accumulated way too many things. Two categories if things that pop up at house after house are: unused gifts received and ungiven gifts. I’m guessing the number of ungiven gifts I’ve encountered in my six years of … Read More
Here we are back for day three of my edit your holidays series, where we’ll discuss editing your holiday meals. In our home the holidays have always been about food. Up until a few years ago, it was typical for our small gathering of 8-10 people to sit down to a meal that would have easily fed 20. Our collective girths were proof that food was an important component of the holidays. A couple of years ago though … Read More
When I was first married I loved decorating for the holidays, probably because I didn’t have that many decorations. As timed marched on though and our family and house grew, the number of decorations grew too. This has resulted in my getting much more selective about what I want to put out for the holidays, as I don’t want to spend more than a day decorating the house, or more than a day packing things up in … Read More
Editing Traditions: Just because your family has myriad holiday traditions, doesn’t mean all of them need to be rolled out every year. Growing up, my family had lots of traditions, like opening an advent calendar and making cookies. I especially recall Christmas Eve traditions – going to church, opening one present each and completing a 500 piece holiday themed puzzle. My husband’s family had their own traditions that were very different from those of my family. While … Read More
So here it is the beginning of the year and I am ready to trade out my odd year (2011) Freedom Filer files for my even year files. Many of my clients use Freedom Filer and I typically receive questions at this time of year about how to actually go about this process, so I thought I’d walk you through the process with me. First, I gathered the 12 months of even year monthly files from my … Read More
When I was growing up I loved decorating the Christmas tree. Dad’s job was dragging the tree in, setting it up and putting on the lights. My little sister Amy and I helped him with the lights, but then he typically disappeared while Mom, Amy and I decorated the tree. It was so much fun unwrapping the ornaments and recalling the stories behind each of them. My mom will probably tell you I lost interest in decorating … Read More