House & Holidays Plan and Other Christmas plans - 2025 edition

[trissie]

I know it seems kinda impossible right now, but Christmas will be here in less than 4 months and the Christmas plans are starting this Sunday!

[trissie]

Both the House&Holidays plan and the Holiday grand plan are starting this Sunday, and the original readings and downloadable materials can be found here:
https://organizedhome.com/christmas/house-holidays-plan
https://holidaygrandplan.com/

Weekly readings / tasks will also be posted here, and I sure am hoping to have company!

[trissie]

House & Holidays Plan Week 1: Planning and Paperwork

https://organizedhome.com/christmas/hou ... nning-week

This Week's Focus: Planning and Paperwork
To make a good beginning takes planning. Where do you go to dream, to budget, to plan? This week in the House and Holidays Plan, we turn to our home's planning center. How is it working for you?

This Week's Household Checklist
- Declutter and clean the home office or paper handling area. Declutter home office or household paper-handling areas this week. Think STOP--Sort, Toss, Organized and Put away--as you clear clutter from your space. Once free from clutter, clean the workspace for a fresh start to the Plan.
- Set up a basic household filing system. A clean and clutter-free workspace is half the battle; next up in the war on paper clutter? An efficient household filing system. Get up to speed on the ABCs of household paper management in your organized home.

This Week's Holiday Prep Checklist
- Make the promise! Plan time this week to begin preparing for the holiday season. Even 15 minutes three times a week will make a good start on holiday prep.
- Set up a Christmas notebook. Whether it's a simple three-ring binder, a section in a paper planner, or a database on computer or PDA, make a Christmas planner to hold holiday calendars, checklists and planner pages.
- Focus family values. Using the Family Values Worksheet, identify and focus the values your celebration will serve.
- Create a Christmas activity center. Whether it's a simple basket or a dedicated space with a comfortable chair, set aside an area for holiday planning.
- Establish a holiday budget. Credit card debt is nobody's idea of a great Christmas gift! This year, set financial limits before you plan the celebration. Tool of choice: a holiday budget form. Keeping tabs on expenditures as you prepare prevents overspending on the holidays.
- Consider a Christmas savings plan. Start now to save money for Christmas. Whether you open a dedicated bank Christmas Club account, set aside cash each week or add to a gift card balance, begin to accumulate funds for holiday spending now. Your wallet will thank you, come January!
- Begin a Master Gift List. Make a master gift list now. In the weeks to come, you'll check it a lot more than twice to organize holiday gift-giving.

all the printables and more reading material can be found at the website linked above.

[trissie]

Holiday Grand Plan Week 1: Front Porch / List Week

https://holidaygrandplan.com/01-list-week/

HOLIDAY PREP: LISTS, LISTS, LISTS
Print the Holiday Grand Plan calendars for reference.
Make the following lists:
- Gifts to be given, amount to spend (include family, friends, school, church, etc)
- Christmas card list (computerize it!) Print list and update it, if needed. Decide how many cards are needed.
- Visits to make
- Parties/Entertaining
- Menus for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, other parties
- Goodies for Sharing/Gifts. Decide how much needs to be made and divide it between the weeks from now through December 1.
- Favorite Meals of Family members for freezing ahead.
- Long-term shopping list divided into: canned foods, perishables for each holiday, linens and dishes, decorations, etc.
- Create a Christmas planner to organize holiday planning.

CLEANING FOCUS: FRONT PORCH

all the printables and more reading material can be found at the website linked above

[trissie]

For me, week 1 always means the office! perfect timing given it's also generally the start of the school year.

Week 1 - office
- clean door
- clean lights (ceiling and lamp)
- clean window (including curtain rods)
- wash and rehang curtains]
- clean and polish desk
- detailed vacuuming
- clean baseboards
- clean convector
- clean/reorganize under-desk filing cabinet
- clean/reorganize bookcase A
- clean/reorganize bookcase B
- clean/reorganize shelf unit A
- clean/reorganize shelf unit B
- dust/straighten stuff on top of bookcases
- dust/straighten stuff on top of shelf units
- reorganize top shelf on table
- sort through box of yarn and knitting supplies
- sort through box of sewing supplies
- organize extra school supplies
- organize art supplies

[trissie]

(I've basically copied everything from last year's thread at http://sheforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=70058 - if your lists were there, that's where you find them!)

[Kittykatt]

Thank you for posting this, Trissie. I was only thinking the other day that it would soon be time to start on the annual decluttering and deep leaning, and also getting the garden ready for winter. (Autumn seems to have come early this year).

Depending on the weather, I usually start my deep cleaning/ decluttering at the end of September / beginning of October, work on that for two months, then around the end of November / beginning of December for Christmas prep and then restart the deep cleaning and decluttering in January. Oh, and I also prune the roses in the autumn, hence the "depending on the weather" phrase! If it's dry, I'm out in my garden! In fact, this year, I could say I've already made a start, as I decluttered and deep cleaned our tiny bathroom last W/E when DH was away, and I've also pruned two roses (I did one today, before the rain started). There will probably be a gap before I get anything else done, but so long as I can get all the "public" areas of the house done before Christmas, I'll be happy.

[Kittykatt]

Christmas Preparations:
Decluttering and deep cleaning:
Declutter hall
Deep clean hall
Declutter stairs (there shouldn’t be anything on there apart from the bowl with toys for Matilda!)
Deep clean stairs
Declutter sitting room
Deep clean sitting room
Declutter landing book case
Deep clean landing bookcase
Declutter bathroom
Deep clean bathroom
Declutter bedroom
Deep clean bedroom
Declutter spare room/ office
Deep clean spare room/ office
Declutter kitchen
Deep clean kitchen

Prune roses 2 done, 26 to do.

Christmas List!
( I’m going to need to make amendments and additions, but it’s a start.)

Christmas prep:
Find my Christmas book!
Gifts:
DH birthday (and card) and Christmas(and card)
DH stocking
DF E
Dnextdoorneighbour C
DH’s family: A, DH will sort: R, S, L&G, B, L2, R2 & D, J
Give tubs of chocolates to: vet, hairdresser, anyone else who has been really good to us this year to say “thank you” – Ocado order for this last year - see if they give good value again?)
List gifts I still need to buy
DH is supposed to be buying for his family
Wrap gifts
Cards:
Do I need to buy more?
Update card list
Check addresses and get DH to print out address labels
Write cards
Are we doing a newsletter this year?

Food:
Ring butcher and order Christmas meat
Veg and fruit
Christmas “goodies” – cheeses, biscuits for cheese, sweet biscuits, chocolate...

Baking:
Mince pies
Gingerbread men
Christmas cake
Glaze Christmas cake
Fudge?
Truffles?

Christmas grocery order – Waitrose (KEEP CHECKING
FOR CHRISTMAS DELIVERY SLOTS FROM MID SEPTEMBER and put the basics in my trolley.) Just need to add any seasonal items, and be careful not to get carried away! Remember fruit for fruit salad, also parsnips, carrots and sprouts (unless I decide on a veg box)
Am I having a Christmas veg box?

Decorations:
Tree
Wreath for front door
Lights round porch
Lights on kitchen windowsill
Wooden Nativity scene (this depends on whether Matilda tries to chew it!)
Church organ musical box, gingerbread house tin and Christmas tree tin (on top shelf of sitting room bookcase?)
Christmas card holders over kitchen door
Hang Christmas count down ornament? (Or will this make my life too stressful? )

Events:
Christmas shoebox for Moldova - check what suitable gifts I have already (I'm assuming our church is doing this again this year)

Women’s group meditation and meal (is this going ahead, as the lady who usually organises this is now extremely unwell.) I could offer to *help* organise it, but not do the whole thing. I know my limits, and I'm already doing parish Christmas lunch.

Parish Christmas lunch. I'm organising this for the first time this year Booked for 04/12 at the back of the church. Need to book caterers soon? ( I'm keeping it really simple this year, so just a buffet).
Find phone number for caterers
Write everything down in a logical order :
Full address of the church,
name and email address for the treasurer, Date: 4th December
Time, 11 am-12 pm (they have hourly slots)
Which menu I want to order with all the add-ons (simple buffet with bite sized cakes and fruit platter)
Order for 20 guests (Remember at least a couple need to be GF)
Explain that the treasurer has the "chequebook" for the church (she actually does everything online) and ask them to send the invoice there.
MD has suggested we make it a a ticketed event, so liaise with D (parish administrator over design of tickets )
Number tickets and keep a list of names!
Work out costs per head.
Also need tablecloths, crackers (DF PM has lots of Xmas napkins she will provide) fairy lights on font, paper chains? MD has offered to make simple centre pieces for table
MD has also offered members of the social.committee to help set up /clear away
Remember we need a separate table for GF food
Tea and coffee from the urns, soft drinks? (No alcohol as we would need an Events Licence, and I'm not going down that route )
Bite sized mince pies?
How / when do we publicise it?

Carol service at church? Am I reading? ( does the catering committee want me to do the mulled wine?)
Christmas services: are we having a Bethlehem Mass at 9 pm on Christmas Eve again? (It was a lot more popular that midnight mass, especially now people are getting older!!!), will I be asked to read?

Date to visit DBIL and family? (Probably early January)

To be continued...

[Harriet]

trissie, you're brilliant

(but we already knew that)

We (well, I, at least) thought we lost access to much of this good information following the 2022 letter from Cynthia, which had said the sites would no longer be available/searchable, and soon our links here weren't working (still aren't). We linked to that full letter in the 2022 Holiday thread in The Creative Home forum here, yet it is gone now, too. By 2023's Holiday thread we were just encouraging those who still had the info in hard copy to refer to those.

So, you may not realize it, but this is a great "find" for some, and if it's okay with you, I'll link to your fun thread here from the annual one in The Creative Home this time. We've been blessed with blessed's (see what I did there) additional thread this year, of summer prep for holidays, since she wanted some early-bird sharing. But time for the regular Holiday Planning thread in Creative Home now.

[L.Ann]

Thanks for the start and the link Trissie! I am going to start with last year’s plan and update as I go.

Cleaning October and November
-spare bedroom
-DD32’s room
-my room
-hall
-kitchen
-dining room
-living room

Decorations
-tree
-bins from shed

Gifts
Christmas
Brother, sister in law, sister, brother in law
DD32, DD38, DD41
DD38’s DH, DD41’s DH
Little Bit, DGD12, DGD6, DGS6, DGS11

Birthdays
DD38
DD41
DGD12
DGD6
DGS6
DD32

Christmas cards, Christmas stamps, mail gifts, wrap gifts
Christmas shopping plans
Christmas activities-s
Shutterfly thing-make card, DD32 2024 book, Little Bit 2024 book, calendar for DD38