What’s your holiday “goal”?

This year, do you want to entertain family and friends in a calm, peaceful home?  Are you looking for more time to enjoy holiday traditions?  Is having a more jolly holiday season a goal?   Being organized at the holidays can help with all of these.  Clearing the clutter that crowds your space gives you a calmer environment.  Purge and donate your unneeded and unused items to get you into the holiday spirit of giving.   Plan your time and priorities to gain time to spend creating new memories.  Being organized at the holidays – as well as the rest of the year – do all of these things for me.  And at the same time, there are organizing projects that really should be put off until after the holidays.  So, what can wait?

January is a great time to work on your photo project.

Memorabilia projects involve a lot of decision making and are very time-consuming.  Deciding what photos to keep, how many, how to best preserve them – these are all decisions for you to make.  These projects can be time and emotionally challenging.  This is not a project to be started during the holidays!  If these items are mixed in with your everyday clutter, gather them all together and store in a weather-safe place to be dealt with during the cold winter and spring months.  You will need chunks of time to make decisions and organize your memorabilia into workable categories.  From there, you will make decisions regarding long term storage options and how to share and display your items.

Organizing is a process, not an event.  It will go as quickly or slowly as you are able to make decisions regarding your items.  Paperwork management is another area that is better addressed after the holidays.  The new year is a great time to create a new filing system with tax files and a new, updated system that sets you up for success in the coming year.  Buy yourself a holiday gift this year; new, fresh quality products will make that task much more enjoyable.