Preparing for Christmas & Freezer Week!

Here we are at the start of December and as well as buying the gifts and food for Christmas, now is the perfect time to start preparing the house for the big day. I find that if my house isn't organised and tidy, then my head feels cluttered and unorganised too. I also don't want to put up the Christmas decorations and add more clutter to the house, so this week I have started preparing the house properly for Christmas. 

Last month I blitzed the kids rooms and sorted out anything they hadn't used in a while to give to the charity shop. This week I am hoping to do a second sweep of their rooms to make some space for the things they will get at Christmas. Additionally, I have also decided to take one room at a time and sort out the cupboards so that I know that the house is sorted by the first couple of weeks of December. Then I can concentrate on doing all of the other things I need to achieve before the big day!

I am a big fan of the website Flylady.net which helps you keep your home and life organised. I found it a couple of years ago when I was trying to figure out how to keep on top of everything.

FlyLady does Holiday Cruising missions - basically something small every day to help prepare for the holidays. It can be things like buy sellotape, iron your Christmas linen or review your holiday budget. These have really helped me to prepare for the holidays. Their super holiday missions start on Monday, so do sign up if you would like to follow them.

The website also does a "Holiday Control Journal" which is not as scary as it sounds but helps to keep all of your holiday organising in one place. If you are not a big fan of the paper version, you could do an online version, either your own or buy writing on their downloadable PDF.

As part of my preparations, I have also started preparing the kitchen for Christmas, after all it is the most important part of the house on Christmas day. Last year I invested in an extra large and deep frost free fridge freezer, as I was sick of managing with the tiny fridge freezer we had. It arrived about two weeks before Christmas and it was so amazing, I was able to do lots of Christmas cooking and baking and freeze it all in advance of the big day.

This year I realised that our Freezer is full up to the max. An extra large fridge freezer means lots of pounds worth of food sat just waiting to be eaten and no room to put anything to keep for Christmas.

So as part of my Christmas preparations, I have declared this week FREEZER WEEK!. Basically, this week is the week that I make all of our meals out of what we have in the freezer and try and use up as much of it as possible. It will be still be accompanied by fresher ingredients like bread, and potatoes, but this way I can make some space in the freezer for Christmas and hopefully save some money on the weekly shop - and who doesn't like to save money at christmas? I am also aiming to use up the things we have in the cupboard to try and make a bit more room there too. It's really simple, just make a list of what you have in the freezer and the store cupboard and then work out what meals you can make with what you have.

I also started my Christmas shopping back in September, but do the bulk of it in December and so it's really important to keep an eye on what is being spent. I have started a spreadsheet to keep a track of what I am spending on food and gifts for Christmas. I have a lot of people to buy for, so it's also handy for checking I have bought something for everyone. 

So that's a quick snapshot into my holiday preparations so far... how are yours going?