Four Tips for Simplifying Christmas

September starts the season of celebration in my family.  Last year our list was insane.

The sad thing is that many of these things I can't cut out. We have 13 people in our family (his immediate family and mine). TEN of them have birthdays between September 1 and December 30. It makes things crazy.

I want to simplify.

Here are the big things that I am planning this year.
- Hubs birthday night in Indy. This is so needed for us.
- Pumpkin Farms (that is really just picking where we are going)
- Halloween -- I am seriously just buying costumes. No time to plan or make anything elaborate.
- Little Mister's birthday party.
- North Pole Breakfast!!!!
- Little Miss's birthday party. (I owe her a nice one I was so sick last year and it was just not fair to her).
- Christmas Eve: Pizza, Movie and PJ night!
- OUR CHRISTMAS MORNING!
- Wisconsin Visit for Christmas

Here are your 4 Tips to Simplify Christmas.

1. Plan for it.

Make a plan for it and stick to it. If I don't have a plan my stress level increases easily 10 fold. I like having my plan all in one place so I tend to make myself a planner for this time of the year.  This year I might print someone else's planner.

I really like this one from Live Craft Eat.  ** this is not an affiliate link, I just really like it.**

2. Say No. 

There are things that I just have to say no to. Like last year I went a little crazy helping out with the Christmas parties at church. This year I am picking one roll and I am picking at most 2 parties. It became a chore. So, we will be snack makers for 2 parties this year and that is it.

3. Be Flexible

Life happens. You have to roll with the punches. I just pray they are not the same punches as last year.

4. Be authentic

Your Elf on a Shelf does not have to be Pinterest Perfect. Be you. Your Christmas cards do not have to have the perfect saying, pose and outfits. (But if that is you and you rock it than do it!) BE YOU! Ask yourself what do I want my kids to remember about Christmas in your family?


What do you do to keep your busy seasons stress free and moving smoothly?

{Make It Monday} Blog Planner

If you have been around for a while you might have figured out I have this need to be organized.  I have a few obsessions with it.

Pencils

Markers

Notebooks/Journals

Planners

And Post It's - I have been outed on Twitter for being a Post It Queen.

If you follow us on Twitter or on Facebook.  You might have also seen that I am trying to find a blog planner that works for me.  I have come to the conclusion - I want too much in an at a glance version to fit on one page and still be able to read it or make any sense out of anything.  I have also realized that I need a planner that I can change every three to six months.  I get super bored with mine at that point.

So, I have to come up with something.  I have tried many things ... Just notebook sheets inside of my planner.

Didn't work so well - I didn't lose anything, but that so could have happened.  And yes, I am working in the bathroom.  Little Miss wanted to play in the tub and Little Mr was napping.  Worked for me.

This is what I have been doing.

It sort of works.  The post-its are used as tabs for the different pages.

I have a key of sorts in the front.  It keeps everything in one place which is good.  I think I am just getting an itch to change it up.  Because it really is working.

I used my MyMemories Suite to make some planning pages the last day or two.  I used it for grocery shopping today, it worked, but I didn't love it.  I did make it for my holiday planner, so I will use it for that, but I am not sure about it yet.  No pictures of that one.

The hunt continues.

What sort of planner do you use?

Mission Organization: Mail Attack

What do you do about mail?  It seems to be a never ending pile sitting right inside my front door.  I didn't take a before picture.  Mainly because I was so sick of looking at it all that I got it all cleaned up and then said, oh I should blog about this.  

So I ask - how do you conquer the mess that is mail?

I need to be diligent about sorting it out when it comes.  Junk, bills, and "fun".  Wow, that fun category is the smallest isn't it.  That is the category for magazine subscriptions, invitations and cards.  Here is what I did.  

I took a basket I had laying around and labeled it "Action" - this means that if the mail is in this basket something needs to get done with it.  Either it needs to get paid, filed, responded too, something needs to happen to it.  Although this is a great idea, it is a little too all encompassing.  I am going to pick up a few new baskets.  I would like a basket for "file", "pay" and "respond".  I also want a larger basket for other things like ... store flyers for the week, magazines and catalogs.  

This system is working for right now, but it needs to get tweeked.  We are on a grand adventure here at The Hickman household.  We are preparing to purchase our first home, so finances is something that we need to get a better hold of.  Mail falls into that because that is how most of the bills come to the house.  

Extreme Couponer I am NOT!

So this is what my coupons used to look like.  

The binder itself was not sturdy enough and I was finding that it would be very helpful if I had pockets in the binder somewhere.  

I also felt that maybe my form of organization was contributing to my lack of savings on our grocery bill.  So I did some research.  I found that I was organizing like many of the couponers out there.  I found a few places I could tweek, but for the most part it was the like others.  

But I needed to update my binder.  

I recycled a binder that I was no longer using.  It had pockets in the front and back and a sturdy cover.
I put the dividers in the binder.

I made a list of the different categories.

 I cut out a bunch of divider labels and wrote the categories on the pieces of cardstock.

I divided the categories as needed.  This means that this section is for "Drinks" - the first page is water, 2nd page juice and you can read, but you get the idea.  I then removed all the previous tabs.  

I have used it a few times since I made it and I like it better than what I was using before.  I have found a few places where I still need to tweek - like a table of contents listing the categories in order.  Especially since I am using multiple stores.  

Spring Cleaning Update

Earlier this week I mentioned that it is National Cleaning Week.  If you looked around my house you would think that there was no way I knew this.

I did tackle the closet though.  In fact I tackled both hall closets.  One was just putting things away where they fit better.  The other took some actual sorting.

Before

This is the closet that stores the bulk of Touch of Home Learning Supplies.  Things, as you can see, are everywhere.  The pink circular tub is sitting in another tub.  Plastic shoe boxes that should be up on the shelf just tossed in there.  Sewing supplies that don't even belong in here added to the pile.  (Why I then also tackled the other hall closet.)

So, I started by just pulling that middle stuff just out.  If it went somewhere else I made a pile to put away later (by later I meant when I was done with project).  That blue tub there was all sort of Christmas stuff that was going to be donated!  The next tub was all office supplies that I have not touched in at least 12 months.  Much of which went straight into the donation pile.  After I pulled it all out I put away what was just out of place, donated stuff I didn't use or need.  Re-organized and stacked it a little differently.

After

I will admit there is still 1 dishpan of stuff that I need to just sort through since Hickman #4 woke up from nap during this project.

This resulted in two bins of garbage and two bins of donations.  Donations including original art work that my husband doesn't love that I painted back in college.  It has yet to be displayed in any of our homes, so I am going to bless tornado victims with some original art.

Spring Cleaning

Friday was "Organize your Home Office" Day which lead right into National Cleaning Week.  I have realized that my home office has started to explode throughout most of our townhouse.  We picked this community and this townhouse because it had a wonderful nook in the kitchen perfect for office space.  It is right in front of our laundry area so I thought it was going to be great.  I was going to be able to work while my children were playing because I could see the living room.

For awhile it worked really well.  I had it nicely set up with a work are for Hickman #3 next to me.  Well, when Hickman #4 come along I found myself working on the couch ALOT.  I didn't want the baby to be that far away, Hickman #3 was not letting me get as much done as I wanted to when I was trying to work from my nook office.  Then, my husband left working for TWC and we dropped down to non-wireless internet.  There was no way I was going to run cords literally across my entire house.  So now there is an office area in the kitchen still even though it looks more like a laundry pile right now.  There is a new office area in our dining/living room.  I am very careful to keep this clean and organized since everyone who comes to our house will see it.

Then there is ... the closet!  For part of my business I need a lot of supplies, so it is stored in a walk-in closet in our hallway.  I went in there today for something I needed and I realized something ...

If I am going to be able to get to any of this stuff this summer I am going to have clean this closet.  I will be brave and show you a picture of it.  It's horrible.

This is my "Monica Closet"
 Everything is thrown in here and it should be kept under lock and key!

So this is a goal of mine this week, to get this closet clean and organized.  I am going to be getting rid of stuff that I do not need as well.  This is something that I do once a year and this week seems like a great week to do it.

I am getting it together!

So if you have visited the site before I admitted recently that I don't always have it together.   Well, I will also admit this - tonight I had a minor meltdown.

Before - It got worse.

After - I do need to put all the trash in a bag, but it's all clean.

I didn't show you a picture of "the corner" mentioned in the previous post.  Well, I had to clean the office tonight.  If I didn't I would have not gotten a thing done tomorrow. 

Husband helped out too.  1. He cleaned up after Kaitlyn (Family Room toy explosion) 2. While I was cleaning the office, "Babe, do you need another pair of hands?"  - I truly didn't need the help, but I was glad that he asked.