It’s crunch-time for Christmas, ladies and gentlemen! I know you and I have a lot to do, but this is the year we are keeping our sanity at Christmas. To help us all attain this goal so we can actually enjoy Christmas, I’m sharing my best tips for Christmas week.
How are you feeling? Truly, are you feeling good or are you feeling yourself slipping into stress and craziness as we enter the week before Christmas? I’m trying so hard not to let the stress consume me this year. I want the joy of my children to be my focus this week, not the presents or the meal or the other things that occupy Christmas week. But this stuff still needs to get done. How to walk this line is a universal Christmas week dilemma.
Luckily, over my years as a mom and my years observing the other moms in my life during crunch-time I have learned a thing or two. So, without further ado, here are my sanity saving tips for Christmas week. I hope they’re helpful to you and allow you to focus on the joy this week, not the stress.
Sanity-Saving Tips for Christmas Week
Presents
Like it or not, presents are a huge part of Christmas. This is especially true if you have small children. Presents can also be a huge stressor during the week before Christmas. If you’re in charge of getting presents for anyone, you’re probably mentally scrolling through your list and what you have for each person, any holes you need to fill, how to wrap each gift, and when and where you’re going to give the gifts. It’s a lot. Although I can’t magically remove all the stress surrounding gift-giving from your Christmas week, I do have a few present-related tips for Christmas week that have made my life a lot easier.
Wrap as you go
Wrapping presents is no joke. It takes so much time to wrap presents. But you forget how much time it actually takes every year. If you leave all the wrapping until the last minute, you’re in for a loooong night. Don’t do this to yourself. Instead, wrap as you go. Or at least wrap in small chunks throughout the week so you’re not wanting to keel over from wrapping exhaustion on Christmas Eve.
It’s also important that you set yourself up for wrapping success this week. Make sure you have wrapping paper and gift bags, of course, but don’t forget about the unsung wrapping supplies like tape, gift tags, tissue paper, and a sharp pair of scissors. In fact, writing this reminds me that I could use a new pair of scissors.
Assemble gifts
If you have kids, you know that many of their gifts require some assembly. Assemble them now, folks. Open the box, do whatever needs to be done to allow the gift to be used as soon as it’s opened. The quickest way to a Christmas morning meltdown is a treasured gift that needs to be put together. Don’t do this to your kids or yourself. Put the dang thing together now. If that means you can’t wrap the gift, buy a big old bow and call it good.
My son is easy this year and has no assembly required Christmas gifts. My daughter, on the other hand, is getting a dollhouse as her big present. Assembly very much required. I’ve talked to my husband (who will do most of the assembling) and scheduled a time to make this happen. If you need help assembling any of the gifts you’re giving this Christmas, I urge you to have a similar conversation with whoever is helping you so you can find a time to get it done. Don’t let this fall through the cracks!
Get batteries now
You need batteries. Of all shapes and sizes. Even if you don’t have young kids or the gifts you’ve purchased for your kids don’t need batteries, you probably still need batteries. The wreaths that run off battery power have been beautifully lit for weeks now, but those batteries are on their last legs. You don’t want to go dark on Christmas Eve because you ran out of batteries. Get the value pack and load up the Battery Daddy.
Organize stocking stuffers
I buy stocking stuffers 12 months of the year. Whenever I find something on sale or that I think would be great in a stocking (usually consumable items!), I shove it in my closet. Let me tell you, my closet is a disaster area come mid-December. If I wait to look at all the stocking stuffers I’ve acquired until December 24th at 10:00 pm, that sets me up for a pretty miserable evening. I don’t want to have a miserable Christmas Eve, and I don’t want you to have one either.
To avoid this, go through and organize the stocking stuffers now. Like today. Grab a bag or a box for each stocking you’re stuffing and toss the stuffers for each person into his or her designated receptacle. If you really want to be nice to your Christmas Eve self, take things out of unnecessary packaging and snip any zip ties that might slow you down when it comes time to stuff those stockings. If you heed only one of my tips for Christmas week, this might be the one.
Food
Food is also a huge part of Christmas. Most of us who celebrate Christmas will minimally have a meal to consider on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Many others will have another holiday meal or party or two thrown into Christmas week. You need to have a game plan when it comes to Christmas week food. I’m here to help with my food tips for Christmas week.
Clean out the fridge
Look, no one likes to clean out the fridge. It’s one of those “put it off until I can’t anymore” tasks we all avoid. Although I would usually rather go to the dentist than clean out the fridge, I like to get the whole thing cleaned out early the week of Christmas. I like my fridge to be clean, free of rotting food, and ready to receive all the yummy holiday food I can throw at it. It’s worth doing to make your cooking run smoothly this week.
Keep non-holiday meals easy
This week is not the week to try to be Ina Garten. Even if you aren’t hosting a holiday meal, you have enough on your plate. Don’t add multi-step or elaborate meals that your kids might not even eat. This is a week that you should use your slow cooker or make a huge casserole that can be eaten for a few days. Heck, don’t forget that grilled cheese and tomato soup or pasta and jarred sauce is a perfectly acceptable dinner. There, I just gave you two of your Christmas week meals. You’re welcome.
Grocery shop early
I think that the closest thing to hell on earth is the grocery store the day before a holiday. And I like to grocery shop! It’s just pure madness. People at the grocery store right before a holiday are stressed out, impatient, and rude and they seem to multiply like rabbits as you go up and down the aisles. This is a great way to push you off your holiday pedestal and make you self-identify as Ebenezer Scrooge. No one wants this. Keep your inner Bob Cratchit front-and-center by avoiding the grocery store the day or two before Christmas.
Now, if you’re going to grocery shop early, that means you need to make your grocery list early. Make it today so you can grab it and head to the store as soon as you can. Don’t let your lack of a list be a barrier!
Make your meal lesson plan
If you’re making any food in the 48-hour period that comprises Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, you need a lesson plan. You need to make sure that you give yourself enough time to make whatever you need to make. This is true if you’re making one dish to bring to one meal and if you’re hosting full meals for 20 people both days. There is so much going on these two days that you can’t take time to cook for granted. This won’t take long to do, but it will pay major dividends when it’s show time.
Other
Although presents and food are two major focuses of Christmas, my tips for Christmas week don’t stop there. Here are my other miscellaneous tips for Christmas week that will help you out just as much.
Delegate
If you’re looking at your list of all the things you need to do in the next week and panicking, stop. Take a breath. You can do this. First, I want you to star the items that only you can do. Say, sing the solo at Christmas Eve services. You can’t get out of this one now if you’ve committed to it. Next, circle the things that you don’t necessarily have to do, but you like to do. We want you to get to do the things you like if at all possible this week because Christmas should be fun for you too. Now look at what’s left. These are the things that must be done but not by you that you don’t really like to do. This is fertile ground for delegating.
Don’t be afraid to delegate items on your to-do list this week. Enlist the help of your husband, your parents, your kids, your guests. Christmas should be a team effort. Need some delegation inspiration? Ask your husband to go grocery shopping. Have your kid run the vacuum. Ask your mom to make an extra dish for Christmas Eve dinner. These small requests don’t really add much extra burden to your loved ones, but they could help you out tremendously. Please don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Set aside holiday outfits
I have learned this the hard way, so I’m hoping you all learn from my mistakes. Here at the beginning of Christmas week, make sure that any special holiday outfits that you would like to wear or you would like your family members to wear are clean. Then gather up these clean outfits, iron them if you need to, and put them away. Don’t keep them in their normal drawers or closets where they could be worn between now and Christmas Eve. The last thing you need is to be doing laundry at midnight on Christmas Eve because your kid wore her Christmas jammies a few nights before and is now having a meltdown because she wants to match the family on Christmas morning.
Charge devices
One of the great things about all of the technological innovation I have seen in my life is the ability to capture these special moments. We all have wonderful cameras and camcorders right in our pockets. But these amazing technologies do us no good if they are dead or have run out of storage. Make sure your phone or your digital camera is charged for Christmas and that you have plenty of space on your phone’s hard drive or your camera’s memory card. Lots of things can derail the perfect holiday. Don’t let your devices be it.
Other posts
Not sick of Christmas yet? Check out these posts that might give you more tips for Christmas week:
I hope these tips for Christmas week do save your sanity this week and let you enjoy Christmas. What’s your best tip for Christmas week? Share it down below or over on Instagram @sarainseason.