Uncluttered Home for the Holidays

As children, we all loved the holidays. All the presents and decorations and wonderful tasty treats—the stuff of everyone’s childhood memories! Conveniently for us, we didn’t realize what a tremendous amount of effort went into the beautiful memories our families created. Now we want to make the season magical for our own families and friends, but we often pay for the sense of wonder with a to‑do list that squashes our peace of mind and compounds our stress levels.

A big part of holiday labor is decorating. Given our predisposition to buy, buy, BUY, many of us have huge collections of holiday decorations already, and we add more every year. When it comes time to decorate, it can be like we’re opening a retail Christmas store in our homes. Tons of work, and then we’re drowning in decorations! Is it really necessary to go so overboard?

Maybe we overdo for the kids, or to conform to family tradition. Sometimes we do it because Christmas shopping is a great excuse to throw caution to the wind and give our inner compulsive shopper permission to come out and play. But “everything in moderation” can serve as a guide for holiday traditions. A few changes might make your holiday more enjoyable and less stressful, with more time for getting together instead of getting things ready.

I have a friend whose husband died in October after three years of battling cancer. She’s 76 and the matriarch of her family. She’s always hosted the big family gathering for Christmas, but this year she’s not up for it. She’s not feeling jolly, and it’s too much effort at her age to plan and prepare to host a party for 40 people. She sent an e‑mail to the family to say that it was time to pass the torch to the next generation—it was someone else’s turn to handle the huge affair.

Her announcement created an uproar! The whole family is freaking out. I believe that their panic arises from refusing to let their family tradition adapt to changing times. And they’ve never thought about the burden they were placing on my friend. They assumed that she would be in charge until she died. They’d be better off now if they’d shared the burden, reduced the effort required of any one person, and let their celebratory tradition evolve into something cooperative and flexible.

Are your family holiday traditions a source of joy or an annual burden? Do they still fit your available time, your budget, and your space? Now is a good time to ask these questions and make some choices—and maybe some changes.