De-stress holidays with tips from Tidy Tutor

Do holidays mean family plenty of shopping, rushing home from work, with one-day to get it all together: Stress.

According to Kathy Roberts of TidyTutor.com, you can do four things that will significantly de-stress your holiday in the days leading up to the big events.

1 Do it now.
Maybe you can slack off later, but in the days leading up to December 24 and 25, try to do the little things immediately. Little pickups and put away tasks. Start to do it early.

2 Pay attention to laundry and dishes.
Dishes. Keep them done. Always in the dishwashers or dish drainer before bed. Use one cup and don’t grab a new one for the second cup of tea.

Laundry. Load in the washer at night. Morning to the dryer. Night fold and put away. You must put away. If you don’t the cat is going to sleep on them, and the family is going to rifle through them.

3 Clear out the house early in the month for cleaning, cooking and company.
Put everything out of your schedule for cleaning and pickup except the living room and bathroom.

Get boxes and put every knick-knack, end table thing, clutter from the entrance way, bottles and jars from the bathroom into boxes. Mark them so you know what is there. Hide the boxes until Christmas is over. When the guests have left, give yourself 15 minutes to toss or restore the stuff you removed.

You might try this at the time you put up your Christmas tree since you will end up with empty boxes. But in any case, you could use produce boxes from the grocery store for this.

4 Create a present wrapping station early.

Gather all the things you need: Scissors, paper, tags, bags, tape and ribbon. Start a list on paper of each present, who it goes to, what it costs and where you hid it. Have an envelope ready for receipts. Then wrap as you go.