The holiday season is nearly upon us again – and although it’s certainly the most wonderful time of the year, that doesn’t mean it’s a completely stress-free time. In fact, 20 percent of people report that they often feel stressed during the holiday season. There’s so much planning to be done, from gift shopping to possible vacation plans – and then there’s the matter of how you’re going to pay for all of the year’s festivities. If you wait until later to start thinking about your holiday plans, you’ll end up not having as much fun as you should – so don’t put things off until the last minute. These are the things that you should do now to ensure that you’ll have a stress-free holiday season.
Clean and De-Clutter Your House
During the holiday season, it’s just about guaranteed that you’ll be adding plenty of new items to your home. If you have children, they’ll certainly be receiving gifts – and it’s likely that you’ll be getting a gift or two as well. You might get a tree, and there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll also be decorating your home. If you look around the house during the holiday season and see nothing but clutter everywhere before you even start putting decorations out, it’s going to increase your stress levels and hamper your ability to enjoy the season.
Before you set up your tree and start bringing your decorations out, take a day or two to thoroughly clean and de-clutter your home. You’ll feel much better if you look around the house, and everything looks clean and festive. It’ll also be great for your stress levels if you know where all of the gifts are going when it’s time to start putting them away.
Don’t forget that a clean house doesn’t just look good – it also smells good. The holiday season is a perfect time to enact some positive changes in your life, and if you’re a smoker, quitting is the most positive change that you can possibly make – both for yourself and for your home. The easiest way to rid yourself of tobacco is by switching to vaping, so jump on a search engine and look for a “vape shop near me” to get started.
Work Some Extra Hours and Reduce Your Debts
There’s a very good chance that you’re planning to pay for at least a few of your holiday purchases with credit cards. Unfortunately, though, making interest payments on an enormous credit card balance is one of the surest ways to make holiday stress impossible to manage. You want to do everything you can to make sure that your credit card debt doesn’t get out of control during the holiday season, and the best way to do that is by paying down your balances as much as possible before you start your shopping. Your employer is probably one of the many companies that’s trying to prepare for the holiday rush, and that means overtime might be available for you. Take advantage of it and do everything you can to pay down your credit card balances before you begin your holiday spending.
Plan Your Gift Giving in Advance
Other than trying to manage an out-of-control credit card balance, the thing that’s least fun about holiday shopping is figuring out what to buy for your loved ones when you aren’t feeling particularly creative. The way to solve that problem is by beginning the brainstorming process as long as possible before you actually start your shopping. Start a list on your phone or computer and add gift ideas to it throughout the year whenever something springs to your mind or a loved one drops a hint. When it’s time to start your gift shopping, just look at the list. By then, you should have plenty of good ideas queued up.
Start Your Gift Shopping Early
Everyone wants to save as much money as they can on their holiday gift shopping, and the best way to save money on Christmas gifts in 2022 is by starting your shopping right now. Retailers are beginning their seasonal sales as you read this, and they might be some of the best sales that you’ll see this year.
News outlets are reporting on the early Black Friday sales as if they’re intended to encourage consumers to spend more even though they’re nervous about inflation and a potential upcoming recession. The truth, though, is that it’s really the retailers who are nervous about the economy. Consumer demand for virtually all products was through the roof in 2020 and 2021, and retailers did their best to stock up and meet the demand. Thanks to constant supply chain disruptions, though, it took time for those goods to arrive. Now, the major retailers are sitting on mountains of unsold inventory, and they want to get rid of that inventory before the economy experiences a severe downturn.
One of the most important things to remember about shopping for holiday gifts is that if you wait until the last possible minute, the retailers will have you over a barrel. Unless the thing that you’re shopping for is widely available among retailers that compete with one another, the seller can charge almost anything for that item when the holiday season is coming to an end. If you want to get the most for your money, the best time to buy your gifts is now, when the retailers are doing whatever they can to prop up their fourth-quarter numbers.
The Holidays Are Best if You Aren’t Stressed
We hope that you found the advice in this article useful for reducing your stress during the holiday season. Although stress is always a fact of life, it doesn’t have to hurt your enjoyment of the season. Do your best to remove the clutter from your home, your finances and your mind. If you enter the holiday season with the cleanest slate possible, you’ll be free to enjoy the rest of the year to the fullest extent.