Day 3: Simplify Christmas now.

May your walls know joy, may every room hold laughter, and every window open to great possibility -- Mary Anne Radmacher

Today’s idea is to simplify Christmas.  In the past I loved to go all out decorating, buying and wrapping gifts, attending numerous performances, watching every holiday movies that came on television, baking 10 kinds of cookies/treats, etc.  The joy of the season was leaking out of my holidays due to my unrealistic expectations of what Christmas needs to be for me.

I’ve already celebrated an early Christmas out-of-town with most of my family.  An out-of-town Christmas was necessarily simplified to avoid carrying all the gifts (little kids’ gifts are BIG!) onto a plane.  So, the gifts were all shipped to my stepson’s home for us to wrap when we got there.  A stop at the store for wrapping paper and tape (forgot the gift tags, so had to make them) and we were good to go.  Now that I’m back home, it’s time to implement further simple tips for our celebration of Christmas.

To make our holidays more meaningful, we’ll continue with traditions that make our family unique, such as a Christmas Eve smorgasbord (complete with pickled herring, which I think is gross, but hey, it’s Swedish tradition!), reading the Christmas story from Luke, and watching/going to a fun movie on Christmas Day. (Simple Tip #1: Establish with your family which traditions are truly important.)

Baking this year at my house is just two kinds of cookies, some easy bars and a few mini-pumpkin breads that can be shared as gifts for visitors. OK, true confession, one kind of treat will be the easy slice and bake cookies you can buy, with red or green sprinkles added :-)  (Simple Tip #2 - Have only one bake-a-thon for all your celebrations - your family, visitors, work potlucks, etc. You may need to hide some of the holiday deliciousness!)  While gathering your baking materials together, ditch any food products that’ve been around since last Christmas, (no one wants to bite into the hard non pareil candies from last year!) and take a quick glance through your mixing bowls/bakeware. (I am donating 2 of my 3 cake-takers -- what was I thinking??)

More to come tomorrow...have a yummy day!

Day 2: Decide what’s important.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity. -- Plato 

Do I even know how much stuff I have?  The answer is “no!”  I mean all the miscellany that just seems to have crept over my home.  You know what I mean...the pile of unread magazines, the unorganized pile of coupons (I know some of them are already expired), and (ahhhh!) the “junk” drawer.  How many sizes of screws do I really need in the house? And how many mixing spoons do I use at a time?  And the bins in the garage...(shudder.)  There’s one thing in seeing potential in miscellany, but when it gets out of hand, it’s just mess-a-lany!  

When I start to feel like my stuff is controlling me rather than me controlling the stuff, it’s time for a change. I work around it -- I clean it -- I lose it -- I look for it -- I spend money on it!  And why?

Today’s simplifying idea is to decide what’s important.  If your house were lost in a flood or fire but your family and pets were safe, what would you truly miss?  If you started over from scratch, what would you absolutely, positively replace?  It’s an interesting exercise that shows what’s really important to you.

What’s important to me?   My family, friends, pets, family photos, meaningful work and faith.  I want a beautiful environment to surround my loved ones (and me!)  I also want simple - and the peace that comes with it!

So...knowing what’s important and that I want a simple and beautiful life, I can get rid of a LOT of things (mess-a-lany!)

Day One: Make a personalized home management journal (PMJ)

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they let you in.”  Robert Frost

Unlike my smartphone, the PMJ can serve as "command central" for my entire family (in my case, my husband and me...my puppies are no help :-). I love that it will contain all the information needed to take care of my home, finances, health, and ... well, really, life ... in just one binder.  Being able to find everything I need to know to care for an emergency or everyday life will make my home and life much simpler! (No more searching through paper and computer files or bookshelves or...well, you get the picture!)  Sharing the PMJ with all the people in our families lets everybody get involved (it sounds better saying, "let's check the book to see what needs to be done," rather than ME being the director of all things.)

You can choose any type of journal you like, but the most flexible I've seen are three-ring binders with divider sections.  What do you include in it?  My dividers are:

• Emergency List (being prepared for an emergency)
• Planning (calendars/events, schedules, mission statements, goal lists)
• Contacts (current phone numbers and addresses for family, friends, favorite vendors, doctors, etc.)
• Family (personal info page for each member of family, birthday list, movies to see, restaurants to try, clothing sizes, gift suggestion list)
• Home Management (daily and weekly routines, home and auto maintenance schedules, home inventory, stain removal guide, home storage inventory)
• Meals (blank menu forms, blank grocery shopping lists, previous successful menus, recipes to try (usually links as I don't use my recipe books much anymore), pantry inventory, refrigerator inventory, freezer inventory, coupons
• Finance (budget, bills to pay, list of all financial accounts, online account information, insurance information, subscriptions, warranty information, utility/services directory)
• Health and Fitness (medical information sheet for each family member, medical emergency directory, medical authorization form, prescription drug record, insurance information, pet records)
• Travel and Activities (travel packing lists for short and longer trips), house- and dog-sitter information, volunteer activities)

There are lots of fancy journals you can purchase, but there are numerous free templates available as well.  My favorite is http://www.flylady.net where her control journal is amazingly inclusive.  Another is http://www.getorganizedwizard.com/blog/2009/08/get-organized-mission-14-organize-your-household-notebook/

Today I vowed to use the templates available and just personalize them with my own info.  Now, it will take more than an hour to put complete this PMJ, but I have the binder and much of the "innards" done in less than an hour.  I'll add a little something to it each day until it's complete -   I can see how it's gonna' save me boatloads of time!

Here's a picture of my journal:

I hope you find this helpful - and please share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Best,

Sandi