Making a list & checking it twice: 4 tips for Christmas success
There’s a good reason Santa makes a list every Christmas season! The sheer number of tasks to get done before the 25th can often feel longer than Santa’s naughty and nice lists combined. If you’re wondering how you’re going to pull everything together before the big day or even if you are sitting comfortably because you started months ago, it’s a great idea to take some time to make a list this week – before Santa’s sleigh flies by!
Lists are a great way to help you organise everything you want done in one place so you can plan exactly what you’re going to do and when. The list doesn’t have to be rigid, but arranging all your holiday to-do’s in one place will help ensure you don’t forget any big things you really want to do because you can’t keep track of everything whirling around in your mind. Lists are also smart because they help:
Save money – If you know what you want to buy you’ll not feel as tempted by the special offers or buy extra things you don’t actually need or already have.
Save time – You’re unlikely to forget a key item and rush out for it when the shops are really busy with everyone else doing their last minute shopping.
Save the environment – Sticking to your list will reduce the amount of extra stuff you have leftover that may end up in the bin and the number of trips you need to make to the shops.
Even though you probably feel like you haven’t got time to sit and plan, taking an hour to sit down and write a list this week is better than lots of wasted time a few days before Christmas. Once it’s all on paper you’ll feel calmer and ready for all the fun festivities. Therefore here are our top four tips for making the ultimate Christmas to-do list:
Tip 1 –
Write down all the tasks that are currently crowding through your head on a piece of paper – don’t worry about the order, who is going to do it or when it needs to be done, just get it written down
Tip 2 –
Ask others at home if they can think of things that need doing and add it to the list. Now, review your list and check that it includes the following…
- Planning your Christmas menu (we’ll be talking about Festive Food from 14 December, if you want to get started now though you can use our 7 day meal planner (2072 downloads) to help).
- Putting together a plan for cooking Christmas dinner
- Food you need to buy
- Making sure you’ve lots of containers to store opened packets of food and for your leftovers
- Food allergies or dislikes for the people coming to Christmas dinner or if you need to tell someone about food you can’t eat
- Your Christmas present list
- Any people you need presents for or specific items you want to buy. Need inspiration? Then our web article next week will have a few ideas to help you, you could also check out our list of gifts with less packaging
- Buying a couple of extra general presents that could be given to people you didn’t expect to get gifts from (wine, book tokens and department store vouchers etc. which could be given to anyone)
- If you’ve got similar tasks on the list group them together so you’re reminded to do similar things at the same time, work out when the things need to be done and write a new list so you can easily see what else needs to be done and when.
Tip 3 –
Put your list somewhere you’re going to see it every day – the front of the fridge or the back of the bathroom door might work for you!
Tip 4 –
Don’t forget– we spend a lot of extra money on last minute shopping, for things we’ve already bought or didn’t really need. There aren’t many people who stick completely to a list but having one can save time, money and maybe your sanity!
Hopefully you don’t have as many presents to sort out as Santa, but we can all benefit from taking a tip from him and making a list to get us into the Christmas spirit.
