Holiday Chaos? Not This Year!

CEO's Christmas Countdown is ready to begin in just two days. Has it really been ten years? Yikes! I have been following the program for many years. I didn't jump in the first year or two she had it up on the message board, but I did join the mailing list as soon as she made it available. I was at first following Katie Leckey's Holiday Grand Plan from the Holiday Grand Plan List Serve group. Over the years I have enjoyed CEO's tasks, reminders, links to articles and of course the recipes. I still have printed copies of these in my Christmas Countdown Holiday Organizer. CEO, aka Cynthia Townley Ewer, the author of Houseworks and the editor of the website Organized Christmas, also developed a Houseworks Holiday Plan, that I have been successfully using for a couple of years. I have been enjoying the Holiday Tips on the Organized Christmas site this year since the beginning of September when this year's Houseworks Holiday Plan began.

Flylady has also helped me through my organizational challenges in years past with the Holiday Cruising Missions on her list and The Holiday Control Journal.

This year, with the experiences I have had with the different programs for over a decade, I am going to use the Houseworks Holiday Plan to keep the house in order and the Christmas Countdown site to keep my holiday preparations on track and finished before the last minute. I will still do any of the FLYLady missions that help simplify my life (her missions started Monday), but I am sticking to CEO's plan. Do you hear the commitment in my tone.

Why am I so adamant about this promise some two months before Christmas is even here? I know that I don't want to be wrapping gifts at 2 a.m. on Christmas morning. I have spent years with shopping only on the few days before Christmas and being frazzled and short tempered because I tried to do a lot in a little time. I have also enjoyed years with a plan with everything wrapped days before Christmas, shopping finished weeks before Christmas, evenings spent enjoying sitting in front of a fire with the family and even planning for guests coming to my house through each of the holiday meals and a party for my mother's side of the family one day and another party for my husband's many siblings and their families another day, and all went well. The difference between working the plan or not is CHAOS or relaxed sanity. I prefer the latter.