4 powerful ways to reduce holiday stress even if you're still in the decluttering process

When I think back to the days before minimalism, there were a lot of things that I expected of myself that added a lot of unnecessary stress to the holiday season, and reducing or eliminating them has made the holidays much more enjoyable.

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1. Decorations

Going minimal with my Christmas decor happened purely by accident and it happened before I even embraced minimalism.

In 2002, Brian and I got married, and since we didn't have much room for his collections, we put all his stuff in my storage unit.

Christmas came and we headed to the storage unit to pull out the boxes of Christmas decor.

I hadn't considered Christmas decor when we stacked all of Brian's boxes in the storage unit and all the Christmas stuff was beneath boxes of comic books, old trophies, and college textbooks.

It was all the way on the back wall, at the very bottom of EVERYTHING.

Since there were 6 feet of clutter between me and the Christmas decor, I decided we were just going to have to do something different this year.

I bought a string of Christmas lights for the tree, but everything else, we made.

The tree looked so pretty!!

And the boys LOVED doing it.

From that point on, we didn't hang traditional ornaments, instead, we all pile around the table, listen to Christmas carols, and cut out snowflakes to decorate the tree.

As the years went on, we found more enjoyment with making all the decor and not storing very much.

I'm down to 2 small boxes, the hold lights, stockings, and a few small things, like a music box from my grandparents and a few other family pieces.

These days (aside from the tree) it takes about 10 minutes to set up the Christmas decor and then 10 minutes when I decide to put it all away.


2. Expectations

When Christmas came and I had teens in the house, I would take out the calendar, figure out what days we were going to the mountain to cut down a tree, what day we would cut out snowflakes and decorate the tree, and what day we would make gingerbread houses.

I would let them know what days to not make plans with friends, and I would let them know if I had any other expectations like whether or not we will have cell phones present.

If we were reducing the number of gifts exchanged, or when we decided to do a name drawing instead of gifts for everyone, we talked about it and were clear about what they can anticipate.

3. Traditions

But there are a lot of things that we do for the sake of tradition, that doesn't add value to our lives, and often, instead of just not adding value, they take away value.

Things I have let go of:

Making homemade candy & popcorn balls. (Yes, it was grandma's tradition, but none of us actually liked popcorn balls anyway)
Sending Christmas cards and family updates.
Participating in the Christmas Cantata
Hosting a Christmas party
Hosting a kid's Christmas party
Participating in a cookie exchange
Making homemade food gift baskets for everyone I know

The things I did keep?

Going to the mountains to cut down a Christmas tree.
Cutting paper snowflakes to decorate that tree.
Making gingerbread houses from scratch and getting together with family friends to decorate them.
Having homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas morning
Filling stockings
Cooking a big turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy.
Watching the all the Lord of the Rings movies over Christmas break

Should we keep traditions? Yes, I believe we should.

But don't continue traditions just for tradition's sake.

Talk to your family, write down all the traditions and the things you feel like are "chores" related to the holiday, get everyone's opinion on them: Should it stay, should it go? Is this something our family enjoys?

Don't allow traditions to be like the old fruitcake jokes where no one wants it but everyone knows it's coming.

4. Perfection

Most of us have this idea that in order to be the best person we can be, we have to have all these holiday things done perfectly.

Now, there is nothing wrong with going ALL IN on the decor or cooking everything from scratch.

But if you do it, do it because you ENJOY it.

And if you don't enjoy it, or you're like me and you are so overwhelmed by the idea of putting the Christmas decor away you consider it a feat if it's boxed up before March, then don't do it.

This comes back to expectations again.

We expect so much from the holidays and from ourselves during the holidays.

Here's the truth:

Even if we could create the perfect holiday season for our family, it won't transform our family. It's still difficult to raise children, there are still disagreements between spouses, there are still inlaws that don't respect boundaries.

The holidays aren't magic.

So instead of requiring ourselves, our homes, or our families to be perfect, say no to things that don't add value.