The holiday season can feel like a lot—parties, decorations, activities, special events, gift exchanges, and more. For some, the more the merrier! For others, the season is overwhelming. As we head into December, I want to remind you that breathing room is a beautiful thing. It’s nice to have some space around you. Let me explain.
Clear Surfaces Invite Creativity and Make Tasks Easier
One surefire way to make the holiday season harder is to try doing everything on tables and counters already crowded with stuff. Nearly every task gets easier when you have a clear surface to spread out and work on:
- A clear surface makes it easier to unroll a roll of wrapping paper.
- A clear kitchen counter provides space for cooking food, preparing holiday gifts, and decorating cookies.
- Clear floors help you easily carry in (and out) holiday decorations.
- Clear tables are quicker to set for a party or holiday meal.
Do you like the idea of clear surfaces but aren’t sure how to achieve them? The key is to prioritize a small amount of daily time to reset your space. This doesn’t mean shoving things into a container or drawer to make everything look tidy. Instead, it means walking around and putting items back where they actually belong—fully putting them away.
If even this feels intimidating, perhaps because you aren’t sure where “away” is, check out these previous posts:
- Clear Space for a Beautiful Place
- When You Can’t Find Space to Put Things Down
- 3 Simple Habits to Keep Your Home Clutter Free and Organized
- Select-an-Effort: Kitchen Counter
Breathing Room Provides Room to Grow
When your drawers, cabinets, and storage spaces are stuffed, it’s hard to incorporate anything more. Many households experience an influx of items during the month, including:
- Gifts
- Art projects (e.g., from children)
- Hostess gifts
- New clothes
- Holiday catalogs
Acquiring new items during the holidays can enhance your experience of the season. However, if you don’t have room to put anything, what was intended to bring joy can end up feeling like a burden.
One of the best gifts you can give yourself is the gift of lightening up and creating some space early in the month. For instance:
- Clear out a few drawers.
- Declutter your toy collection.
- Purge your pantry and food storage areas.
Need a little more guidance on how to begin? Check out this post on The 12 Days of (Pre) Christmas.
Mental Space Reduces Stress and Enhances Joy
One of the most challenging aspects of the holiday season is carrying the mental load of everything that needs to be done:
- Planning menus
- Buying, wrapping, and shipping gifts
- Making travel plans or preparing the house for guests
- Coordinating the schedule and shuttling family members around
I often joke that the holidays can feel like a part-time job added on top of our day job! Many of these tasks constitute what I call “invisible labor.” No one may see or appreciate your efforts, but they would notice if these things didn’t get done.
While I can’t lighten your load, I can offer tips for getting these tasks out of your head and into a planning system.
Space in the Schedule Reduces Time Pressure
One of the biggest threats to enjoying the holiday season is time pressure itself. It can keep us focused on what’s coming next instead of what’s happening right now. We risk missing the moment. If this sounds familiar, I encourage you to relentlessly minimize optional activities. It’s okay to skip a tradition if it’s stressing you out.
Need some more help with time management? Here are a few additional tips for the time-crunched.
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Can you think of an aspect of your life where you could benefit from more space?
One of the biggest struggles for my clients is that they leave items out to help them remember a task. That is why the counters are cluttered. I encourage them to use a different reminder, like a digital or paper list, to help them. It takes creativity and other ways to remember to help keep counters clear.
That “leaving things out as a reminder” really only works if you never have anything out. In that scenario, the object really stands out and grabs our attention. Unfortunately, most of us have various items laying about, and as a result, the things we intended to trigger our memory gets obscured or co-cluttered by other objects, and stops working as a reminder. I love your idea of using a list to be the source of the “to do,” rather than the counter. A clear surface and some breathing room really do help us our enjoy our space!
Some of my clients have a tendency to simply add Christmas decorations to their regular decor which makes it difficult to find any space at all. I recommend putting regular decor away in the boxes used for Christmas decorations. This way the Christmas decor can really shine and stand out.
I also love the idea of not doing everything – picking and choosing what you do so that you can be completely present. Space is a beautiful thing!
I love that trick of using the Christmas decorations boxes to hold the regular decor. Otherwise, it can be hard to enjoy the decorations because there is too much going on visually. And then when it comes time to reset at Christmas, the regular items are at your fingertips for an easy switch!
At this time of year, I could use more space in my fridge, including the freezer! For a while we were so stocked up that we had to think twice before buying any more food. We’ve managed to use it up and are now being careful not to overfill the fridge and freezer again before we’ve bought all the extra stuff we’ll need for the holidays.
I’m in the “declutter the fridge” mode myself right now, having just hosted a house full of people for Thanksgiving. I’m going to minimize the grocery shopping as much as possible until we have eaten down what we have!
I love having clear space not only to work but to enjoy holiday decorations. When I put out my decorations I put away (often in the same box that the holiday decorations were in) items that are in the space where I am decorating. Everyday mugs are packed away and holiday mugs put out. A lamp is removed in my office to make way for a ceramic Christmas tree.
I love this approach, Jonda. I move my holiday mugs out as well and put in the Christmas ones. Too many mugs in a cabinet can be a disaster waiting to happen, right? Plus, it just feels more festive.
Great topic, Seana! I found that clear surfaces help me stay focused on tasks at hand. So, at the end of every task, whether in the kitchen or anywhere else in the house, I make sure everything is put away, and the counter is cleared. It is how I define a task as completed. That last bit of putting away things helps me say, “The task is done.”
Great way to define “done,” Sabrina!
Not only does it push you to truly finish, but it leaves your space ready for whatever might be coming next!
I know that when my space is cluttered, whether it’s been a crazy week or I’ve merely spent the afternoon having to pull out a variety of things for a project (like packing for a trip or wrapping a gift), I’ve got no mental space to get clarity. Last night, I got back from a week away for Thanksgiving, and I’d made a point of clearing everything before getting on the road. It would have been so easy to just dump out the suitcase and leave everything but the groceries out; instead, I sorted the laundry and started a load, put away all the toiletries and meds, put the suitcase back in storage and just spent the necessary time doing a re-set. It made it so much easier to hit the ground running today after that week away, because there was nothing blocking my path.
It would have been easy to leave things out as a reminder — the library book that has to go back today, the client file to prompt me to confirm for tomorrow, etc. However, one sticky note in the center of my desk, to attend to before anything else, definitely beats a house full of clutter to “remind” me to do something. You are SO RIGHT. With my clients, I always try to show them that we clear a workspace by putting things away, first, before we start work; that way, when we’re done, we’re putting away the work items and don’t have a double-pile of hangers-on.
And I have a rule — as soon as I get a gift, I write the thank you note right away, because that’s my “permission slip” to put away the item in its new home. Because I hate clutter, that pushes me to write the note, so it works in both directions.
I love that rule for writing the thank you note. Once you incorporate an item into your life, it is so easy to forget to write the thank you note. Definitely going to embrace that rule in my own life.
Also great thought about clearing a workspace by putting things away before you begin a project. It also helps us track time, knowing when we need to begin putting things back. If there are EXTRA things to go back, besides what we took out, it’s hard to gauge when to be wrapping up.
My biggest space challenge this time of year is to keep space for downtime and replenishment in my schedule. I agree that it is A-OK to let go of traditions that no longer bring you joy. Actually quite liberating. 🙂
This year no one will be staying with me over the holidays. I decided to forgo decorating the second story of my home where the bedrooms are. There’s always next year!