#1: Maximize your limited social time at the holidays by attending an event and arranging to meet for a meal with friends beforehand or dessert afterwards.
#2: Brighten up your calendar (and outlook) with holiday stickers or a red pen on special events.
#3: Mark your calendar with 2-hour appointments for preparations. For example, Thursdays bake, Fridays decorate, Saturdays shop and clean.
#4: Enlist a “Holiday Buddy” to call each weekend and plan for the coming week.
#5: Line up envelopes to stuff and stamps to stick for your kids or spouse to assemble while making dinner.
#6: Buy gifts in the same category – different sweaters for everyone, CD’s or books for mailed gifts, or favorite restaurant gift certificates.
#7: Shop for everything on-line or at one mall to simplify the abundance of choices.
#8: E-mail a short, multiple choice gift list to the person you’re stuck on and ask what they would REALLY like to get this year.
#9: Buy novel to curl up with at day’s end to get you through the season.
#10: Savor one event or conversation each day by jotting it down in a holiday journal of “The Best Things that Happened to Me This Season.”
Marcia Ramsland, author of Simplify Your Life-Get Organized and Stay that Way!, is well-known as The Organizing Pro. Her DVD “Prepare Your Heart and Home for the Holidays” includes many more tips. In January she will begin an online 8 week series, Simplify Your Life.