Three Things We Do to Make Christmas Easier:
1. We order gifts online. Shopping when it's crowded and everybody is frantic and cranky makes me frantic and cranky. We try to shop year round (a great way to find deals!) but we buy what is left online. Amazon
even does free shipping on orders over $25. Problem solved.2. We cut down on Christmas cards. I love sending Christmas cards, but the past few years have been making me grumpy. I was spending a fortune in postage to send cards to people that I did not even know. Last year, my husband and I sat down and went through our address book. This year, we're only sending to people who are close friends, close relatives, and/or people who we get cards from. This has cut down our list significantly. Huzzah!
3. We no longer travel at Christmas. This one has made us a little sad, actually, but it has simplified our holiday quite a bit. A few years ago we were snowed in to my parents home for days, and it was uncertain if we were going to be able to make it back by the time my husband needed to be back at work. It was rather stressful for all involved. After that experience, we decided that anybody is welcome to come to our home for the holiday, but we no longer travel. We do visit at less inclement weather prone times of the year. While it was a hard decision to make, it did not cause the drama we expected, and we've had people come see us over the holiday! :)
What things have you done to make your holidays simpler? How did it change your holiday? Did those changes cause drama, or did it go over better than you expected?
5 comments:
As you might have read on my blog, I am giving only used items from thrift shops for Christmas. It is unbelievable how much money I have saved doing this. On top of that, I am adding $5 Water For Christmas cards to all of the gifts I am giving, and still spending signifigantly less. Plus, I haven't run into any of those crazy department store shoppers.
FYI: you're still on my Christmas card list! We will still send out a Christmas card this year, but it will include the web address to our online Christmas news letter.
Naomi, used gifts do save an insane amount of money! I think you're an awesome mom to show that things don't have to be new to be fun!
I also love the Water For Christmas- I'm going to be posting about a similar issue later on this month.
I wholeheartedly agree with your decision not to travel for Christmas. My husband and I have already agreed that we'll institute the same policy as soon as we have children. Both because of the expense (a third airline ticket) and we think kids should be at home on Christmas morning to open presents. For now, we're still traveling for Christmas, though we have flexible employers so snow-ins aren't as stressful. Post-kids, we plan to travel at Thanksgiving, Easter, and sometime in the summer.
I wish we didn't have to travel for christmas, but alas, we definitely do. DH's grandmother is 76 and would have a cow if we didn't come for the holidays. Her first son doesn't come for Christmas and she hardly talks to him anymore. We do switch off thanksgiving though. One year here with my family, next year with his family in OH. It gives us time to save up for the "expensive" year. the plus on both accounts is we never have to cook! lol
One thing we do save on is no christmas cards at all. Most people just throw them out, so why even send them? I love Naomi's idea about the online newsletter! We gotta look into that...
I am doing away with Christmas cards this year. I realized last year that we spend so much time, money, and effort sending out photo cards with cutesy pics and hardly get any cards back! And they just get thrown out anyway.
So we're skipping out. Can't wait to hear about this from the family...ugh.
:P
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