Christmas.......... a whole lot simpler.

Christmas (last year in 2018) was for the very first time, a lot simpler for our household.

After several years of more often than not spending literally weeks upon weeks decorating the house with an extensive collection of lights, decorations and trees, I knew that I wanted to try doing things in a less stress inducing fashion at Christmas that year. 

Christmas in a much simpler, less busy fashion? That meant trying to do a number of typical things quite differently as a household, and perhaps not even at all.

The result was that the weariness that regularly turned up around and post-Christmas Day each year, in years past, was so much better avoided. 

We got to see as a household firsthand that less was indeed more, when celebrating Christmas and other such seasonal celebrations. We got to perhaps more closely experience what Christmas surely was meant to be about. 

Christmas, as we experienced it in 2018, was a lot less full of busyness and activities that typically would all tear into time, energy and finances quite significantly.

Over at The Household Logistics Youtube Channel, I shared around Christmas last year a video I put together about having a simpler, yet still stylish Christmas. The link to that video is here for those who might like to see it. 

This Christmas, with our house being currently on the market we have no decorations, not even a tree, up and around our home. Christmas preparations have this year been even more simplified and made even more straight forward yet again......................and somehow it all feels perfectly okay and just right.

Sometimes the busyness of preparations can actually swallow us up for days, weeks, even months ahead of the 25th December each year. I have personally started to really want to step back more and more, and determine what really is most appropriate time-wise, health-wise, budget-wise and stress-wise to take onboard for each and every holiday season.

I have now come to think perhaps a lot of what we have thought in the past was deemed to be part & parcel of Christmas was actually just a big distraction, from what was really important. 

As I have observed others these past weeks frantically shopping in stores and running to and fro 'doing Christmas,' I have personally been very relieved this year to have not got caught up in a lot of additonal stress & busyness at the end of a very busy schooling and working year. 

It is funny how your perspective changes when you take on the role of observer, compared to being participator.

In past years it has taken sometimes hours upon hours to put together Christmas displays around our home and property. I loved the specialness it created for us all and the wonder lights and decorations added to commemorating the day. 

Yet this year, after another busy year of work and commitments, all those extra elements just seemed to require energy and effort that I could not produce going into the Christmas season.

Over at the Household Logistics Youtube Channel, I have shared a video of how I have gone about organizing a range of Christmas decor in the past. The link to that video is here also, for those who might find it helpful to view.  

It is certainly nice to know that should we choose to go down the track of celebrating Christmas again with decorations about the house, they will be easy to locate due to the organization previously put in to storing them safely and appropriately.

I am however personally looking forward to not having days locked up, post-Christmas, in putting away additional decor and items this year. Keeping things very simple and less busy is very appealing.

Making our experience of Christmas even a whole lot more simpler this year, has not only been extremely appealing so far, it has also been very refreshing for our household as well.

Over at the Household Logistics Youtube Channel, I previously shared a video about how I went about setting up a drawer of gift wrapping supplies and the link to that video is here. 

With a good proportion of our household items currently packed up in storage, we have had to make gift wrapping also something that was carried out extremely simply this year, and I have to say that has also worked well. Simplicity can be embraced in so many facets and ways.

Can Christmas be less commercial, less like what it is marketed to be, and still somehow be special and uniquely Christmas? 

Can Christmas be experienced and commemorated with less tinsel and superfluous home decor fuss? 

Can it feel real and be honoured without elaborate special foods, multiple special symbols and trinkets and less traditional activity? I think we have discovered as a household it can.

This year we have planned as a household to pack a picnic and go on a short tramping walk on the 25th December. Somehow it just appealed to us all: to get outdoors, keep things extremely simple and be out amongst nature being reflective on Christmas Day. 

May you also experience and enjoy the peace of Christmas this year, no matter where you are, who you are with, and how you go about commemorating the day. Christmas...... we have found it can be a experienced a whole lot simpler, yet still be very special.

Christmas Mince Pies

10 December Favourites

This week's Youtube video is now posted over at the Household Logistics Youtube Channel. It highlights 10 things our household enjoyed & appreciated in December. Look out for our favourites list each month.... this is the first of those we will share. Here is the link to the video: 10 December Favourites

A Simple Yet Stylish Christmas

A simple yet stylish Christmas? For many of us, the possibility of having both a simpler yet stylish Christmas can just seem unfathomable. In what is supposed to be one of the most joyous and peace-filled times of the year, too often it proves to be instead extremely busy, and often downright stressful.

We often want to go all out to make everything perfect. We endeavour to take onboard a great deal, in order to make the festive Christmas and New Year have a dreamy and magicial quality to them. This is often carried out at some cost to our health, as well as our pockets.

What if we could bring back a more definite sense of calm and peace to the holiday season? Wouldn't that be great for both our sanity and our pocket?

Here are five tips I am personally embracing, as I aim to have a simpler yet stylish Christmas season this year. I am hope they may perhaps help you also, have a more peaceful and somewhat less stress-filled holiday time this Christmas season.

Tip One: Simplify your Christmas Decor.

In years past I have begun decorating for the Christmas season the day after Halloween. It has literally taken months of preparation to haul out numerous trees, lights and home decor, in order to decorate not just the living area of our home, but also every other room as well. It was often a mammoth feat, filled with anticipation but also rather energy sapping.

This year I am keeping it simple, yet stylish. The dining table will be decorated, there will be a change over of cushions and throws in the living area and a few other incidental festive elements put out and about. However, this year I am aiming to embrace more fully that 'less is more.'

Less means the house will look less cluttered. Less will mean that over the holiday season we will not be busy maintaining too much (no more extra vaccuming or dusting around multiple trees or ornaments for me!). Less will mean the focus will be able to be more on the true meaning of Christmas, rather than chasing after acquiring this, that and the other thing, to meet some higher than required expectations to make it 'feel' like Christmas.

By keeping the house less cluttered, the decor less overwhelming, there is sure to be a greater sense of visual calm evident. After a busy year, it is time to wind down, rather than wind things up. Keeping things in check with regard to Christmas decor will surely help.

Tip Two: Simplify your Calendar.

In years past like many families, we have endeavoured to catch up with extended family and with friends over the main festive week of the Christmas holiday season. Sometimes it gets plain crazy trying to meet up, in all honesty. We can become so keen to catch up with everyone and fulfill everyone's expectation to catch up, that the quality of time actually spent with loved ones is just not quality at all.

Taking time to spend time in a way that is more conducive to resting, is our aim as a household this year. Ahead of time we have let extended family know that we wish to extend to them the greater blessing of peace and calm this year by keeping things much simpler for everyone. There is no need for any of us to feel obligated to catch up and visit over the main part of the Christmas and New Year Holiday this year at all.

Simplifying your engagements, not getting caught up in attending or hosting multiple get togethers,  makes the Christmas Season less about doing things out of a sense of obligation, and it makes it more about keeping things consciously calm and peace-filled.

Too much travelling makes everyone weary. Tensions can also mount up quickly when some relationships are already perhaps somewhat strained, so why add unnecessary tension to what is often an already busy time of year? Practising simplicity in relation to any obligations you choose to take onboard over the Festive Season makes good sense. Keeping things simple is often the greatest act of kindness able to be expressed.

Extra costs associated with additional food, drink and gift needs can add undue stress and strain on already limited family budgets. It is surely a greater blessing for all parties if we honour each other with space and room, for resting and time-out, from what is often deemed to be silly season busyness.

Tip Three: Simplify your Shopping.

From the first day of December it seems that people go into shopping overdrive. A simple stop off at the supermarket can take a greater length of time than usual, because the frenzy of Christmas shopping has begun! A quick visit to the local store can take 20 minutes longer, as we navigate aisles and aisles of Christmas themed decor and other stock, now brought in store specifically to entice us to buy, buy, buy!

Suddenly life can become centred around Christmas Wishlists and worries about how to buy that much wanted gift, that is really out of our price range. We can be trapped quickly into the emotional games that can become attached to the giving and receiving of gifts; their appropriateness, their financial value, their desirability. Why do we do it to ourselves? Why not keep things simpler?

This year we are choosing to make gift giving in our household a lot simpler. There will be no stockings to fill, and there is a ten dollar gift buying budget per person. It offers us each a chance to be creative, innovative and really think through our purchases carefully. It has been an eye opener to have these guidelines in place and to see what great gifts can be bought for this particular set amount. It can be done!

Going all out and blowing a household budget to meet hoped for gift wishlists, is not keeping Christmas simple. Maxing out on a credit card is not conducive to starting a new year well. If you cannot currently actually afford what you wish to give, why tie yourself up in knots over the months and months ahead? It is surely much wiser to keep Christmas gift giving simple and reasonable, on the monetary expense front.

Gifts can be made. Gifts can be kept practical. Gifts can be kept to a reasonable quantity. Simplifying your shopping by looking out for bargains throughout the year can also be a wise way to fulfill your gift giving during the Christmas season. I have found in the past that it can be good to watch out for post-Christmas sales, as it is often after Christmas that the very items you paid big dollars before Christmas, are now offered at a cheaper more budget-friendly price.

Food and drink consumption can be crazy over the Festive Season, let's be honest. This is an area of shopping that can be kept sensible also; why over indulge and live to regret it later? Simplifying what we accumulate for Christmas can only be in our favour on the health and financial front. Why not consider having just chicken and salad, rather than turkey and ham and all the trimmings? Keeping things simple yet stylish can be done on the food front also.

Ahead of time, grocery can be purchased and items tucked away at the back of the pantry or in the freezer. In the few weeks leading up to Christmas, food prices often increase, so why not think ahead and not get caught out? It makes sense to consider your menu well ahead of time and plan to shop accordingly.

Tip Four: Simplify your Expectations.

Expectations can get out of hand before and over the Christmas season. The pre-Christmas brochures can start appearing in the mailbox as early as late October and early November. We can get mailers depicting photographs of beautiful jewellery, perfume and homegoods............ all at allegedly fabulous prices and promoted as the ideal gifts for loved ones.

It can be too easy to get sucked into the sense that if we don't get that piece of jewellery, that gorgeous perfume or new ontrend home decor item, that we have missed out this Christmas. We can be too easily reminded that our household budget is not as big as the Joneses, and we can start to feel a sense of underlying failure about not passing on to our loved ones the very gift we really would like to give to them.

We need to guard our hearts and minds going into the Christmas season. An expensive gift is not necessarily the best and only gift that we can give to show how much we truly love and care about our loved ones. Getting wound up about our failure to provide is not something we need to tie ourselves into for Christmas at all! We need to guard our thoughts and therefore our expectations on the gift giving front. Simplifying our expectations as gift-givers and gift-receivers is a healthier approach to surviving the Christmas season, thought-wise and finance-wise.

Taking the commercialisation of Christmas out of our Christmas experience is a healthy and practical step forward into the Holiday Season. Put a No Junk Mail sticker on your letterbox if you have to. Limit how much time you are watching those commercials on television.

Choose to consciously take Christmas back from those wanting to make a literal profit from you, over the weeks up to the 25th December. Gifts are NOT supposed to be given out of guilt or obligation! Choose to keep it simple and keep it reasonable, for all involved.

Tip Five: Simplify your Vacation.

Are you rushing about making bookings for a post-Christmas vacation? Are you ticking off lists of items needed to go camping or to go travelling? Why not choose to simplify your vacation this year and choose instead to stay home. Rather than joining the seasonal great exodus of people piling their vehicles high with all the latest camping gear and lining up to escape away via the southern motorway, why not choose to do your holiday in your very own backyard?

This year as a household, while my husband is on leave from work, we are planning to stay at home and rest and relax, with all the comforts of home. We are very much looking forward to having time at home and sleeping in our own beds. We are looking forward to not having to book cattery and kennel accommodation for our furry family members. We are all very much looking forward instead to putting our feet up, reading books, playing board games and most importantly, keeping everything both simple and budget-friendly this coming Holiday Season. Yay for simplicity!

Simpifying your vacation experience leaves room for quality and quantity of time. Not having to rush from A to B to C, is something we are all really looking forward to embracing this year. Not having to worry about what may or may not go wrong away from home-base. Not having to do bookings, not having to buy extra items on the consumable or equipment front........... it is looking really appealing to our household this year. Simplifying your vacation can mean you have a more stylish Christmas, because you have less overheads to worry about paying for and less additional add-ons added on.

By embracing these five helpful tips for the coming Christmas and New Year season, I believe our household will have a far calmer and rest-filled Holiday Season. I am looking forward to the coming holiday, as already the benefits of keeping things simpler are paying off. I hope you also may find ways to keep things stress-free for your household, so the true meaning of Christmas does not get lost in too much busyness. Enjoy the holiday, by keeping it real and keeping it functional, for all, this year.

What are some ways you are embracing a simpler yet stylish Christmas this year? Feel free to leave a comment & let me know what you find works best for you and your household. Happy Holidays, Everyone!

Christmas Reflections #1

Growing up poor. It's an experience that shapes your life. That's what could best describe it, when I reflect back for a bit at my own childhood.

For much of my own childhood, my brother and I were simply that: growing up what others would deem poor.

As the Christmas week finally kicks in, it is funny what memories from times past come to revisit you. Today, I am remembering what it is to be growing up classed as poor.

I am remembering because of the power of social media. It is indeed quite a force to be reckoned with, this thing called social media.

Lit against the light of your computer, laptop screen or phone, you get to read other people's posted text messages, requesting a gift or two for a local family in need. There are multiple requests being posted up for donations of gifts for a needy child. Poor little souls all needing gifts. One, then two, sometimes even four.

It is quite heartening to read the reply comments. The comments with offers of clothing, a new-to-them toy, an edible sweet treat or a colourful trinket. Something, anything that someone has kindly remembered they have spare.

Suddenly Christmas morning will no longer be so dismal, so empty. There is the promise of a parcel or two for that particular poor family's child. Let's hope they also have an actual tree.

Growing up poor. It isn't fun growing up classed as poor. It is something that rubs off on you as a small impressionable child. It rubs off on you and it's effect lingers for a bit, when experienced within any given life time.

There are all sorts of definitions for the term poverty. It depends of course, on who is formulating those definitions.

There are multiple debates held as to what best defines child poverty.

I would hazard a guess that those who engage most in arguing over what best defines child poverty, may not necessarily have experienced it, in it's full emotional measure, as it is seen and known through the eyes and ears of a child.

Growing up poor shapes your experience of Christmas. A new set of pyjamas, underwear, a pair of socks are not received as begrudgingly as they might be in a more well-off household. The soft flannel or crisp cool cotton of nightwear fabric gets rubbed and fingered and valued for being new to the very grateful wearer.

One of the best presents I ever remembering receiving, was as a young adult, and it was a requested garden spade.

A spade?

Yes, a garden spade.

My grandfather had obviously done his usual careful research and had then gone out and purchased for me the best spade he and my grandmother could afford to gift to me that particular Christmas.

I had requested the gift of that spade. To see it there beside the Christmas tree, ready, wrapped and waiting to be handed over to me, caused a lot of pleasure that Christmas.

That spade represented a rite of adult passage, looking back. To now have ownership of my own garden spade meant I could get on and do what I wanted, what I most desired, what I most needed..... and that was to get on and become one of the next generation of able gardeners in a family of gardeners.

I would repeatedly know that possessing the ownership of a garden spade meant my life's path could, and would, be forever altered and changed.

Growing up under the mantle of being classed as poor, I knew firsthand if I could dig over some dirt no matter where I ever was, I could feed myself.

I could grow and provide food for both myself and whoever was in my current household.

Having watched my own mother again and again break hardened ground with a faithful garden spade, I repeatedly received the message to my impressionable child soul that a garden spade would be one of the very, very best tools to ever possess as an adult.

I learnt that one of the basic necessities of life could be best achieved with some sweat put into action. I learnt very quickly, being able to put food on the family kitchen table via some actions at the end of a spade could keep poverty a little further at bay.

I hate poverty. I loathe it.

It is a black, hungry dog that nibbles at the heels of small children and makes them realise they are different from their schoolmates.

It reminds them they are different, in the form of the clothes that they wear, the way their hair is cut, the toys and trinkets they have. It is there often lurking around the food they hurriedly gobble.

Growing up poor. It's rough on children. It's tough on single parents who are genuinely trying to make a life that is better, securer and changed for their children. Growing up poor, bites most harshly and most often at Christmas.

The commercialism, the materialism of Christmas knocks again and again at the doors of our poorer homes, demanding entrance and notice. All the while encouraging stress and deeper difference, as the calendar marks off each of the coming days of Christmas.

Just how many lights? Just how much tinsel? Just how much of this, that and the other could elevate us out of the pit of feeling extra particularly poor at Christmas?

How many food parcels? How many gift baskets? How many petrol vouchers would help us feel somewhat less poor when we are daily approaching this feast-time called Christmas?

Growing up classed as poor taught me this most important lesson: none of it.

None of it?

Yes. None of it.

We are only as poor as we feel. We only as poor as we choose to see ourselves poor. We are only as poor as we choose to cloak ourselves in a desire to repeatedly acquire, to have and to possess.

Choose your battles, and one of the biggest in life can be against being and feeling ever so unpleasantly poor.

You can make steps to conquer it best when you realise just what few blessings you actually do already possess.

You can conquer it best when you teach your children to have a focus on people and not possessions.

You can grab it by the horns and call it out of it's position of over-riding dominance when you keep Christmas simple and less about more.

You can choose to steer a path away from it when you look at what you do have, and make the most of it to bless others.

You can simply declare yourself far richer than you ever thought possible because you choose to exercise gratitude and lightly hold onto the stewardship of any extra that comes to rest at your door.

Growing up poor? Or growing up rich? The choice is most evident at Christmas.