Christmas time is an absolute joy but boy, is it a lot of work! The 26th of December rolls around and we’re left with a whole lot of crap stuff and nowhere to put it all. The recycle bin is full, the fridge is crammed with leftovers, and each room has piles of new items that need a home. Where to even begin?
Each year, my husband takes off the week between Christmas and New Year’s from work. It’s one of my favorite things about him. During this time, after all of the celebration has settled down, we take down all of the Christmas decorations and get to work on the reorganization of nearly the whole house! By the time he heads back to work during the first week of January, I’m left with a purged home and I absolutely love it. There truly is no better time to get started on the re-evaluation of the house than right after Christmas. Chances are, a lot of the common household categories (
clothing, bedding,
toys, and kitchenware) have had a nice revamp. So run with it! For every new shirt you hang up, take down an old one that hasn’t been worn for a while and put it into the donation pile. Black Friday is accompanied by tons of good deals on bedding or bath towels, so if that’s what was received for a gift, simply swap it out for old, unused, or worn items! Here’s the big one for us:
toys. My son’s birthday is in November and my daughter’s is in January. So between those days and Christmas, our toy count is bursting at the seams. We occasionally donate, but the real lifesaver here is rotation! We rotate bins of toys every few weeks or so throughout the year and during our January House Purge we re-evaluate and decide on the best toys, the most played with toys, the least obnoxious toys, and even the cutest toys. This determines where and how we combine the old
toys with the new. Now, while we’re at it, why not throw in some office organization as well? The spiffy new tablet can probably replace that old broken one that hasn’t been used for years now. Cords and headphones can always use a rewrap and be stuffed somewhere more neatly than they currently are, and nobody needs as many papers as they have! This could also easily include documents or files on the computer that don’t need to be there! I think we all get the point – there’s a lot to do just about everywhere! Screenshot this checklist or make your own, but I swear to you– you’re going to thank yourself down the road for clearing up some of the old while welcoming in the new!
Fresh goals and new perspectives of our day-to-day lives aren’t incredibly easy to achieve when our homes are stuck in the past and filled with old items and clutter. Lets start this next year extra refreshed, by not only sorting through our goals and habits, but our homes as well.
