House & Holidays Plan: Get Organized for Christmas

A CLEAN AND ORGANIZED HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Christmas is coming, and you're dreaming of a clean and organized home, decked out in holiday glory. Then you open your eyes to reality. Looking around the house, it's hard to imagine how to cut the clutter, manage fall cleaning and prepare for Christmas all at once. 

How will you bring the current state of domestic chaos into holiday readiness: clean, organized, prepared? Try the House and Holidays Plan and make your house work ... for the holidays!

Working week by week, the House and Holidays Plan (HHP) is designed to help you clean and organize your home in time for the holiday season--and take care of seasonal preparations, too.

Beginning on August 29, 2021, the HHP breaks decluttering, cleaning and Christmas organizing chores down into small, weekly bites.

Each week, the HHP assigns a cleaning-and-organizing focus for a room or area in your home, along with a short list of holiday planning chores to chill out seasonal stress before it begins.

You'll learn to STOP clutter, clean and organize each room in your home. At the same time, you'll tackle a few holiday preparations each week. The goal: to bring house and home into readiness for the holiday season a bit at a time.

Weekly Household Checklists

Each week, the HHP focuses on a single room or area, applying four basic skill sets for an organized home: declutter, organize, clean and plan. Area by area, you'll cut clutter, organize, and deep-clean in good time to have a clean house for the holidays.

There's a seasonal logic to the Weekly Focus assignments. Early on, the HHP centers on personal spaces, to make it easier to plan the season, craft gifts and decor, and carry out wrapping and Christmas card chores.

As Thanksgiving Day appears on the horizon, food preparation and storage areas take center stage to speed menu planning, holiday meals and baking.

By December, the focus moves to public spaces and final cleaning, leaving the house clean, organized and ready for the celebration. By the time mid-December arrives, the house is clean, organized ... and ready to to shine during the holiday season.

After the holiday, the HHP's final week sees you into an organized New Year, debriefing, storing decorations, and getting a good start on the next year's celebration. Debriefing after the season will help you prepare for an organized Christmas ... next year!

Weekly Holiday Prep Assignments

Along with an area-by-area household focus, each week includes a planning assignment for holiday prep: a list of do-it-now jobs designed to make short work of preparing for the holidays. 

From gifts to decor, cooking to clothes, weekly holiday prep assignments take the big chores and break them down into easy-to-manage baby steps. 

Doing a few holiday tasks each week prevents December burn-out. Because the House and Holidays Plan gives you a head start, you'll be relaxed and ready to celebrate when the season arrives.

Better, spreading the cost of the holidays over several months makes it easier to achieve an all-cash Christmas! Starting early saves money; you'll be poised to shop for gifts during Autumn clearance sales, and stock the holiday pantry at bargain prices during the pre-Thanksgiving weeks. No more holiday credit card debt!

Printable Christmas Planner

The secret to an organized holiday season? A dedicated notebook or planner to track and record all the little things that make the celebration special. 

To stay on track as we prepare for Christmas, we'll build a Christmas planner to organize home improvements, cleaning and holiday prep. Crafted from a three-ring binder and free printable planner pages, this simple binder will become a power tool for Christmas organizing.

Each week during the HHP, we'll add new gift lists, planning pages, inventory forms and calendars--and to make it easy to get organized, they're free for the printing!

With a Christmas planner, you'll have gift lists, menus, recipes and decor ideas at your fingertips.

Next year? You'll hit the ground running with the help of last year's planner pages. Building a Christmas planner is the smart way to get organized for holiday seasons to come!

Ready to organize home and household for the holiday season?  House and Holidays Plan 2021 begins Sunday, August 29, 2021.

Browse the links below to celebrate Christmas in a clean and organized home: