I'm Baaack! Ready to get organized for the holidays??

Sorry I've been gone for so long. Even those that are organized can get thrown off schedule with events foreseen and unforeseen.

Can I just say that I'm so glad to see that some of my organizing genes have been inherited by my children? My second daughter started college this fall. Due to the scheduling of BYU-Idaho, she is off track in December, meaning she will head to school for less than 14 weeks and then she's home again. I think the strategy for packing is different in this situation and luckily she has winter semester off in a cold climate like Rexburg, Idaho. (Frankly, I don't think she would have fit in my husband’s Prius, with all her stuff, plus her winter coats and shoes!)

Months before she started packing for college, I had her keep a list of things she used on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. (Having my organizing genes, she loved doing this,which helped immensley.) She listed items she used for personal care, kitchen (she is in a cooking dorm), at her desk, clothes she wore, etc… This list became my prized possession, and bartering tool, just like the “Temple of Doom” and the whip was to Indiana Jones.

When it came time to make the official packing list, it was a simple task. We read down the list, perusing over the items, marking essential and non essential items. We came to an agreement on what we needed to purchase and gather, and then I pulled out the suitcase to pack and the two bins to fill. Believe it or not it was that easy. The bins she filled with items she could leave in Rexburg when she came home for winter break and the suitcase was for the items to bring home. She also had a big duffel bag to fit all of her bedding and computer bag for her laptop.

Advanced planning is the key……..and like packing for college, advanced planning can make the holidays easier.

The other day I started to think about the fast approaching holidays and made a list in my mind of what I needed to do before they were here. I wrote down those items and broke them down to essential and non-essential. The top of the essential list was “Make memories, not pies!” Why did I write that? It seems like every year after the holidays my husband and I always say, “I wish we would have made time to attend this holiday event or done this service, we’re going to plan better next year.” If we had put all of the food planning into planning our memory making activities, we would share more memories as a family, and our waistlines would be smaller.

I’ve got a plan on how to accomplish this this year. After we have eaten our Thanksgiving dinner and we’re all sitting around looking through the newspaper for Black Friday deals, I’m going to pull out the December event page of the paper and start marking the December calendar with every event we want to attend.

I’ll post that calendar on the front of our refrigerator for all to see. Each week when we have our family planning meeting, we’ll look to the calendar and schedule around those events. We’ll be planning so far ahead we will be able to invite friends to attend with us!

Hopefully, this is something you haven't thought about in organizing for the holidays. (All the other organizing tips for the holidays you can read in the magazines that are currently on the racks in the stores or on the web) I think tomorrow I’ll purchase a cute little holiday colored notebook to jot down notes on our holiday events, the “must sees” and the not so “must sees”.