As a homemaker the holidays are exciting as well as overwhelming. We tend to give ourselves more than we can handle. We find so much joy in homemade gift, homemade meals, homemade treats, homemade decorations…. and want all our traditions to be special, unique and made from scratch. So how can we avoid overwhelm this holiday season?
This is a honorable goal and can bring joy to the home as long as its not paired with overwhelmed and stress. Here are 5 ways to keep the joy in your home and the stress elsewhere.
- Letting Go of Perfection
- Declutter Your Decorations
- Keep Your Everyday Meals Simple
- Consumable or No Clutter Gifts
- Remember, All Glory be to Christ
Letting Go of Perfection
No matter what trick you use to simplify your home, avoid overwhelm and make the holiday’s less stressful nothing will actually work unless your attitude and perspective are right. Some people call this taking care of your ‘mental health’. I would say this is much more of a heart issue than a mental issue.
When you love something it becomes important to you. Once something is important to you, you get anxious and stressed when that thing is not going the way it should. As a homemaker, we are responsible for the things going on in our home. The cleanliness, the meals, the way the home functions, we are the ones who get to work that out and accomplish it. It becomes important to us.
What do you love?
I love homemaking! Creating a home that is comfortable, hospitable, clean and has the smell of homemade meals delighting the soul is what I love doing. I love when my kids want to be home. When my husband comes home from work with a smile on his face. I want people to feel welcome and at home in my house. This is all good, until it is more important, loved more than my own families well being.
So what do I love more? I love the Lord and the most important thing I can do as a wife and mother is emulate Gods love to my family. Show them love, teach them love. Walk in His way and teach my kids to do the same.
Proverbs 25:24 says “It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.” It says similar things in Proverbs 21:9 and 27:15-16. If I’m continually stressed over the well being over the home and I’m yelling, complaining and getting frustrated with the kids, I’m in the wrong. My love is on my home and myself more than my family who the home is for. I have become a contentious women.
Let go of perfection
If you find yourself overwhelmed, bitter and contentious over the busy holiday season you need to let go of the perfection of your home and seek perfections or sanctification in your relationship with your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Avoid overwhelm by resting in the Lord. Remember His holiness. Be thankful for His sacrifice. Serve you family for His glory. Let go of the ideal perfect home and seek the perfect Lord. Let go of the idea of the perfect holiday experience and see the perfect Lord. Don’t hold onto the standards of the crunchy homemaker but seek the standards of the Lord. Only then will you be able to truly avoid overwhelm.
With that being said, lets get into some of the tips and trick that can help simplify our homes now that our hearts are set.
Declutter Your Decorations
To avoid the holiday overwhelm in your home, simplify you decorations. Now, I’m not saying you have to go all minimalist with your holiday decorations but try to avoid a cluttered look. Not every little angel, nutcracker or snowman has to be out every year. If your decorations make you feel like your house is clutter and uncleanable, simplify them.
A cluttered house can be hard to relax in. During this time of year our schedules are often full and cluttered. Our home should be able to give us all rest and peace. If the decorations stress you out, simplify them to fit your family’s needs.
Letting the kids help Decorate
When you have little kids who want to help decorate things can get stressful very easily. We imagine we will be making wonderful memories with our kids when decorating until they have their own great ideas of how things should look. Then its messy, unorganized, and chaotic.
I want my kids to be creative and celebrate our saviors birth with joy and not memories of mom controlling things and taking the fun out of it. But I also can’t stand the numerous messy, mismatching kids ornaments and cut outs, drawing and such. Its all clutter to me.
In our house, each of the kids rooms get their own tree with their own ornaments. My kids can also display all their arts and crafts and decorate in their own rooms however they want. They get to be creative and make memories. I get a tidy house with decoration that bring me joy and not stress.
Maybe you don’t want a tree or decorations in their room. You can also take same idea and apply it elsewhere in the house. Like a table, shelf or mantle that they get to decorate and arrange. Giving them some boundaries to their creativity is a good for them. When given boundaries they become more intentional with what they do.
Keep your everyday meals simple
The holiday season is all about food (and Jesus). From Thanksgiving to New Years there are so many traditional meals, sweet treats, from scratch family recipes we have to make. There are parties that we are baking for and edible gifts to make all on top of all the expected amazing holiday day-of meals.
For the homemaker it can be a lot of fun or stressful days in the kitchen. This is when meal planning and freezer meals come in handy. I love cooking, but it can be exhausting during the holidays to keep up with all the extra baking and cooking on top of the daily meals. Having a monthly meal plan laid out for the month of November and December help me a lot. Here are more resources on monthly meal planning.
When planning these meals I choose easy, simple meals that my family loves. Meals that can be make ahead of time if needed. In November I often make a few freezer meals for some of the busy days in December. This makes it easy for us to eat a healthy home cooked meal on days we have been out all day enjoy the seasons festivities. Having freezer meals ready also makes it easy for me to relax and not worry about dinner when I’m overwhelmed with all the extra holiday baking.
In all, to avoid the holiday overwhelm as a homemaker plan our a months worth of meals ahead of time. Choose simply easy meals. Have a well stocked freezer of meals ready to go.
Consumable or No Clutter Gifts
As a homemaker, as your family receives gifts, it can be stressful. As a mother with 5 small children we receive a lot of toys at Christmas time. It doesn’t help that we have November, December and January birthdays in our family. Lots of new things coming through that I must now find a place for in my home and teach my children to put them away properly.
The day after Christmas, about 3 years ago I remember looking at the mess and realizing I had not place to put all these new toy and I cried. I was overwhelmed. That day I made a plan, went to Walmart, bought bins and a new shelf, organized and threw out a lot of old toys to make room for the new ones. Here are a few tips on how to the avoid overwhelm and stress of gift receiving as a homemaker.
Tell your family and friends what gifts are appropriate
You don’t have to make this a joy killing moment of making harsh boundaries. It can be as simple as mentioning “We are getting out kids fun art supplies this year, they would love more coloring books too”. Often times that sparks a good conversation with friends and family as to what type of gifts are joy giving in your home.
In the past, to avoid overwhelm, I have had to give some family members a limit of how many toy and gift they can give my kids. Thankfully we have such good relationships that this was not offensive. When giving these types of boundaries I have often worded them like “We have a lot of toy right now, for Christmas I’d appreciate it if you only got them 1 toy. You can get them as many gifts as you want but can you keep the toys to a limit of 1 per child?” If you need more boundaries you can say something like “We have so much right now, and would appreciate a limit of only 3 gift this year.” Or what ever it needs to be.
What type of gifts to kids that are not toys
To avoid the clutter and overwhelm of toy during this seasons think of consumable or easy to store gifts for you kids. Gifts like sidewalk chalk, bubbles, coloring books are great non food consumable gifts. When they are done they are gone.
Food gifts, like their favorite snack in their stockings is always loved. I always fill my little kids stocking with applesauce, banana, boxes of yogurt covered raisins and fruit snacks and they love it! As they get older treats like, breakfast cookies, chocolate bars, trail mix. You can be as crunchy or not, food gifts are always loved.
For more ideas for no clutter consumable gifts here I have a list of 27 gifts ideas you can check out.
Remember, All Glory Be To Christ
Now that you have decluttered, stocked up on freezer meals, and your gifts aren’t stressing you out, you can remember again, this is all for the glory of Christ. It may be tempting to say what I do is for the glory of God. Christ is honored by my work. I give honer to Christ with what I accomplish. Like a knight saying he will win this tournament for the beautiful lady. Its not about me giving God glory with what I do but doing what He would have me do that brings Him glory.
All glory be to Christ means I seek His will and workout His plan that He has for me. God has prepared work for us to do and yes, doing the dishes, making the meals, wrapping the gifts so beautifully is a part of the life that he has given to us. But the work he desires for us is in our heart attitude towards Him and our neighbors. He desires us to love Him with all our hearts, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors as ourself. Put off sin, confess and repent, giving glory to our Lord.
When you do the work of a homemaker, don’t come to God saying “Look what I did for your glory” but come to God asking “What can I do to give your glory”.
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