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Holiday Chaos on the Go: Tips to help you through the holidays!

aftermanyyearsllc-Amy Dua

Since I left my hometown outside of Buffalo, New York and moved to Michigan, I made a promise that I would return home as often as I could to spend time with my family. When my husband and I began having children, we kept up with that promise and visited at least 5-6 times per year. As our kids started growing up and playing sports etc, the visits were becoming much more difficult to facilitate as regularly, but the one time of year which was a guarantee was Christmastime. The kids had time off from sports and school, so we made it a point to be there for every Christmas.



This has been a beautiful tradition, and my children do not know Christmas anywhere else so they look forward to going every year. As beautiful as this tradition is, this did not come problem free for me, the "Christmas coordinator" of the family. When we decided to do this, that meant that I needed to be ridiculously organized in a sea of chaos! Trying to essentially prepare for Christmas Eve/Day a week early was not something I took lightly. I refused to not bake my half of the Christmas cookies, or make the chocolates, or not buy the kids big gifts that we would have to lug with us while still keeping them hidden...Oh no, not me! To my husband's dismay Christmastime took on a life of its own resulting in me usually ending up getting sick on Christmas Day or shortly thereafter because I was so sleep deprived and mentally exhausted that I had run myself into the ground. I am sure that many people know exactly what I am talking about. Well, over the past few years I have really made an effort to change this tradition of Christmas literally affecting my mental and physical health. I came up with a few ways to lighten the stress of it all. Of course as your children get older things become a little easier, the size of the gifts does seem to get smaller for example, cologne rather then a mini-kids kitchen, a pair of air pods instead of a trampoline etc. Also, with the advent of Amazon I must admit things have become much easier to a degree. After many years of making myself miserable to achieve the perfect Christmas, I came up with a better plan for Christmas. These are some of the things that I now do and I can honestly say that last Christmas was one of the best because of them.


1-PLANNING- I try to map out Christmas about 2-3 weeks before Thanksgiving in an effort to not ruin favorite holiday for myself. Get out the calendar and count the days I have between Thanksgiving and the day we leave for Buffalo (usually the last Friday before winter break)Map out (in between holiday parties/events) times I will have available to whip up a batch of cookies make some chocolates in that week or weekend before, and stick to it! Order/purchase any and all supplies for cookie and candy making and gift wrapping before Black Friday.


2-GIFTS-As I am purchasing gifts, I have as many sent straight to my destination as possible, and any gifts that I purchase that are not online, pack them in a tote or 2. If the little ones asked what was in the tote, I just told them they were gifts for family. As you can imagine, especially when they were younger, questions would start to arise as to what was in the tote and did Santa really exist, were gifts for them inside etc.. We have always kept the motto in our house that if you do not believe, then you do not receive, and that seemed to quiet the questioning. Even now with our four kids ranging in age from 19 down to 9, the kids are all pretty respectful about abiding by that rule.


3-COOKIES & CANDIES-I really try to make sure that I have all of my cookie and candy making done the weekend before I leave. I have found that trying to finish up those preparations in the few days that we have before Christmas eve is just WAAAY to much! It causes stress between myself and my mom trying to fit it all in last minute. If I show up with all of these things made, we are all much calmer and happier.


4-THE WRAPPING- So sending the gifts to your destination is great and all, however, that means you have to wrap everything when you get there. This was always an issue anyway because we would cross through Canada to get to Buffalo so we could not wrap them in case we were pulled over to have our car checked by border patrol. So this one has always kept me up for half the night on Christmas eve for probably the last 18 years of my life. Last year I finally changed that! I'm not sure if you are like me, but I always try to have a relatively equal amount of gifts for the kids. Even if I have to separate two items that go together, or wrap up a small little something, I like to keep it somewhat even. That being said, I need to see it all laid out in front of me to be able to decide how to wrap and if I need to purchase anything else to even it out. A list just doesn't work as well for me as the visual of it all. So last year, when everyone was going to bed, I went down into the basement and pulled everything out of the tote, and unwrapped all of the delivered boxes etc. I decided how things needed to be wrapped and sorted them back into the bins/boxes. The next day I went to the store to get any remaining items, and I wrapped! In between times when the kids were talking to Grandma, I snuck off to wrap a couple of gifts. The kids were outside playing, I wrapped a few gifts. The kids went to bed, I wrapped a bunch of gifts. My end goal being that I would not have ANY gifts left to be wrapped on Christmas eve. No more sitting on the living room floor for hours, back aching, watching A Christmas Story for the second time at 3am finishing up wrapping that last gift. NO MORE!! That had literally made me sick for way too many Christmases! It was a bit difficult at times when the kids were trying too come in the room, or my husband was wondering why I had disappeared again, but let me tell you that those little sessions of me sneaking off to wrap during the day were so very worth it!

I am not sure when Christmas for me turned into such an overwhelming event. It has always been my favorite time of year, but somewhere along the line, I realized that trying to make everything perfect for everyone else was making me miserable, so something had to give. My husband said, you can't do everything, you are sacrificing yourself and your own ability to enjoy the holidays. He was right to some degree, however, I was determined to figure out a way to have it all AND actually enjoy it. It had taken 18 years to figure it out, but let me tell you...you can have it all, so long as you figure out a way to make it work without sacrificing yourself. My way may not work for everyone, as it is tailored to my specific situation, so you have to tailor your Christmas prep in a way that suits you and where you are going, but I can tell you that advance planning is the key! I used to think that Black Friday was a good time to start planning, but that just wasn't far enough out. I still found myself scrambling to find melting chocolates because I ran out and the store was out of them, or I ran out of the Christmas cookie boxes that I make for the kid's teachers and the store is out because they have moved on to Valentines Day etc. Life is a lot less stressful now that I started planning after Halloween rather than trying to scramble and plan after Thanksgiving. As my husband always says, "prior planning prevents poor performance!"

Happy planning so you can truly have a happy holiday!






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