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Organizing your home for Halloween is almost like Christmas for many people. There is a tremendous trend to decorate, decorate, and decorate. I like the decorations but I have limited myself to decorating the house only for Thanksgiving and Christmas due to organizing issues.
I know, this sounds like a cop out and you may think that I’m missing out on the fun - and, you may be right. However, I’m not missing out on two crucial things: Storage problems for those Halloween Creepy Crawleys and the Clean up factor after the day has come and gone!
Lets discuss these. First, Finding extra storage in our house is like finding money. It’s hard to come by. If I did find a corner or two in the attic calling out for a box of items, I don’t just go buy stuff to put there aimlessly. I have ‘the list’ to read over first to determine if I really need something new.
That is when I decide that if I were going to buy new decorating items, I would buy them for Thanksgiving or Christmas for two reasons: 1. I would only have to go back in to the attic during that time to store items. And, I don’t have to have a whole separate place to store things as since I only have two holidays that demand decorating, I only have to have two sections partitioned in the attic, therefore making it easier to locate said items.
The second reason that I don’t decide to buy Halloween decorating items is that, although putting the items out and about it fun and exciting, taking the items down and putting them away causes me stress. Finding the storage containers, the time to store the items, the time to store the containers, the time to put back the things in the place of the decorating items …… I have just decided that eliminating this from my life is eliminating stress and that, my friend, is like lifting me up on a cloud.
This does not mean that I don’t enjoy driving around looking at the decorations in all my neighbor’s yards. I do! I enjoy seeing the kids all dressed up. I enjoy giving out candy. I also enjoy getting up on November 1st and having my Organized Home ready for those Thanksgiving Preparations!
It is the Fall Season and we are quickly running out of time before the Holidays. Is your home organized enough to get you through? I don’t mean where you can find everything you need at all times, but is your home relaxing? Can you come home at night and not worry about the next couple of months? Have you kept up with your promises of paper filing? Have you dealt with each magazine and either scanned in your info to keep or tore it from the magazine and filed it away?
These questions won’t keep you up at night. What will keep you up at night is the sick feeling in your stomach that goes back to the thoughts in your head “The Holidays are coming and I can’t possibly have any one over”.
Why is it like this? I know you ask this same question every year. I know that every year you somehow make it through, and, you PROMISE yourself that ‘next year’ it will be different. I am not so different.
I am a perfectionist. I can say it with sound conviction. You may think, then, that my house is easily in order and that everything is perfect! Well, I can tell you that being a perfectionist is harder than you may think. I have the uncanny ability to say “Well, I don’t have time to organize the whole room, therefore, I won’t clean any of it”. Does this sound familiar to anyone? I like to have everything in perfect order, or, it really doesn’t matter to me. That may be a little untrue, but, I do have a problem with small chunks of home organizing.
My best advice for getting things done – for those like me – is a timer! Lists don’t help me near as much as a timer. An old fashioned egg timer or a fancy watch that beeps – it’s all the same and it is deeply warranted at my house. Just setting it for 15 minutes at a time is a life saver. You can do anything for 15 minutes, can’t you?