It’s easy to feel stressed in the run-up to Christmas. Many of us put such an emphasis on it as a special time of year that making it feel that way can take its toll.
Christmas is a great opportunity to spend dedicated time with family and friends, and it’s worth going to a bit of effort to facilitate that. You can take steps to simplify a complicated period, giving yourself the chance to really enjoy it yourself.
Start early, plan, and organise.
The key to an easy Christmas lies in preparation. The bigger a family affair it’s going to be for you, the earlier it’s wise to think ahead – planning things out in October or November can cut out last-minute panicking.
Consider making a dedicated checklist for Christmas on a handy planning app like Todoist that can help you organise your thoughts. Updating tasks and travel plans on a digital calendar can give you a helpful top-down look at what needs to be done and when.
Streamline your Christmas dinner
The cooking of the big dinner is famously busy, so give yourself every advantage you need. You could opt for meal kits that come with pre-prepared ingredients to save you some time on the day or place an order in advance for meat for Christmas dinner to ensure you get the best selection in good time.
Go digital with e-cards
The festive period generates an astonishing amount of waste, with discarded Christmas cards alone equalling £2.8 million worth of landfill every year. In an era when we need to do as much as we can to combat climate change, it might be worth evolving your practices when it comes to cards – especially because it can also make things easier for you.
Switching to e-cards can save you time by enabling you to send them instantly, and it’s easy to find a host of customisation options so that they still feel personal.
Delegate, delegate, delegate
For many people, Christmas is a family affair – which means getting the whole family involved! All the stress of preparation should never be falling on only one person’s shoulders, so delegate liberally. Assigning people to help out with cooking, decorating the home, or wrapping gifts can ease the burden on you, and is easy to do when you’re alreadykeeping track of your various tasks, as mentioned earlier. Stress shared is stress halved.
Simplify gift-giving
If the prospect of rushing around trying to pick out gifts for everyone makes you feel anxious, you’re not alone – and it doesn’t have to be that way. Consider adopting a Secret Santa policy for the whole family, with a set budget, so that you only need to focus on getting a gift for one person each and won’t need to feel overwhelmed.
As for gifts themselves, you can help your home to feel less cluttered both during and after Christmas by focussing on gifting ‘experiences’ rather than physical items. Not only do presents like these reduce waste, but they also create more lasting memories and can be easier to organise than trawling through shops for the ‘perfect’ item.
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