The Organised Housewife » Tips, ideas, inspiration and motivation to help keep you and your household clean and organised

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Nov 01 2012

What are your struggles each Christmas?

Category: Christmas

 

What is your biggest struggle when preparing for Christmas?

Do you find you:

  • don’t have enough time to purchase gifts
  • you always tend to spend more than you budget
  • you have the best intentions to write Christmas cards, but don’t find the time
  • you would love to bake more Christmas recipes
  • you would like to spend more time with your family and friends

Please leave a comment below with what your struggles are so I can make sure the tasks are included in the series.

The ‘Organise Yourself a Merry Little Christmas‘ series starts on Monday. Each day I will be sharing a new Christmas task to ensure you have completed everything needed by Christmas Day,  yummy Christmas recipes, fun Christmas activities. a gift guide with ideas on what to buy or make your loved ones and more.  

Don’t forget:

to get a copy of ‘The Organised Housewife Christmas Planner’ to help organise tasks throughout the series.  This 45 page planner will keeping all your checklists, planners, budget, travel information and more together in one folder.  It is available as digital download so you will receive it instantly after purchase and can start organising straight away!

I have printed a few copies of the ‘Christmas Planner’ which I can post to those that can’t print it.  See more details here (limited amount available).  

Being organised is just the start of what I want for Christmas:) 

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  • Rachy

    Trying to find what to buy and the money to buy all the presents. I swear it gets harder and harder each year

  • Mel

    I would love to bake more Christmas recipes and also thinking of ideas for presents instead of asking everyone what they want.

  • Marita @ Stuff With Thing

    I would love to bake more but the summer heat generally puts paid to those plans. No way I want to put the oven on in 30C+ weather.

    • Bubbles74

      Try no bake recipes. Chocolate crackles, white Christmas, chocolate truffles made with crushed biscuits. The kids love getting involved in crushing the biscuits!

  • http://www.facebook.com/vicky.sculley Vicky Sculley

    My major issues with Christmas is sticking to a budget for presents and writing Christmas cards

  • Annette Cruickshank

    Every year we are up half the night christmas eve wrapping the kids presents. We have 9 children so it is a lot of wrapping! We are so exhausted then for christmas day.

    • http://www.facebook.com/carli.thom.1 Carli Thom

      We are the same!! We have 6 children and are up till at least midnight wrapping and arranging presents because you cant start until everyone is sleeping! Im ok with then getting up at the crack of dawn on christmas day, but its a good thing we do a huge cooked late christmas lunch at about 3pm, because hubby is usually snoring on the couch by 6pm and by this time I am too exhausted to organise yet more food! A cup of tea and early to bed for everyone!!!

  • signaturelife.blogspot.com

    Getting the gift shopping done in time! I don’t like to wrap the kids presents until I have everything so that I can lay it all out to make sure it all looks even. The problem wit this is it’s always last minute.

  • http://twitter.com/vampSaam Saam Thorne

    I feel disconnected from my friends, so sending Christmas cards is a big one for me. I’ve managed to find most of the kids’ presents already at home through the “20 days to organise…” challenge (score!), but ticking everyone adult off the list is hard.

  • Lisa

    Lots of last minute invites to events (kids classroom Chrissy parties, work social things, extracurricular end of year parties etc) + working double or triple the hours I normally would + special dietary needs = lots of last minute shopping / not staying on budget / messy house & not much sleep :-( Help!! I would also love to know other people’s thoughts on how they deal with Christmas and other people involved in their children’s lives (ie therapists, swimming instructors, teachers etc). Do you all buy something for all of the special people who share the care of your children?? If you do, what kinds of things do you buy?

    • Bubbles74

      I usually get the kids to make something for the special someone’s in their lives. Last year we wrapped spearmint leaves & jaffas in red & green cellophane to make holly. This year we’ll be making tiny Christmas trees from small cotton reels & mixed size green buttons to hang from the Christmas trees. Takes a couple of hours one afternoon with the kids. It’ll be one of our Advent calendar activities again.

  • Eli

    Buying presents for my dad and my brother who both don’t have any hobbies. Wine or Scotch have become the boring fallback presents.

  • Ilona

    Working out what to buy the men in my life who won’t cooperate by telling me what they want!!

    • Bubbles74

      I find this the hardest too. This year I got a Cudos deal for a flight simulator for hubby & dad, but still stumped for brothers & nephews.

  • Terry Hansen

    Stocking stuffers always seem to be the last thing I buy and everything is so picked over. And for whatever the reason is, I do it again each year and wait until the last moment!

  • Elissa Overton

    Christmas recipies! I also do some cooking, but would like to be more organised and plan ahead in time. I always leave it so late and feel rushed!

  • Nic

    Sticking to a budget!! There’s always another great new idea or item that I find.

  • Sarah Haydon

    Yes!! All of the above. This is a very hectic time of year for my family. I work in retail, my husband is busy preparing school diaries for the coming year, Plus we have two birthdays in December. It’s a nightmare! I have already purchased your Organiser this year. I hope you can help coach me through this year. Counting on you Katrina ;-)

  • http://www.facebook.com/melindadp Melinda Di Palma

    The logistics of Christmas are my struggle. Figjring out who I need to give presents/cards to, what events we have on in the lead up, when to do christmas shopping so that I beat the rush and this year we are travelling interstate so I need to make sure that we have everything ready before we leave (and that family will have things like wrapping paper available for when we get there. Oh and I have always wanted to do something personalised for a card, but am never organised enough to arrange it before its too late.

  • Melanie

    Gift ideas for teenagers and young adults that doesn’t involve money or gift cards

  • Denise

    I would like to bake more christmas goodies.
    Plus I wish great things for presents were’nt so expensive. I do love that christmas is for spending time with family & friends

  • Lauren Amundson

    I go way overboard each year on presents for the loved ones in my life. This year I have no option but to be good as we can’t spend hardly anything on presents this year. It will be nice to be forced to focus on the real reason for the season instead of all the commercial accoutrements.

  • Bubbles74

    I’ve already purchased the Christmas Planner, but can’t print it. Do I have to pay again to get a printable version for my iPad? Feeling a little ripped off as I haven’t experienced this problem with anything I’ve bought from anywhere else.

    • http://www.theorganisedhousewife.com.au Katrina

      Hi Allison

      No you don’t have to pay for it again, you should be able to print it, please email me shop@theorganisedhousewife.com.au if you want to chat further and see if we can work out what’s happening. To open it you need Adobe Acrobat J

      • http://www.facebook.com/BeccaMumby Rebecca Mumby

        Bubbles74 – ipad does not support Adobe Acrobat. No apple hardware does.

  • Bubbles74

    Christmas cards! Always great intensions of writing & sending Christmas cards to loved ones interstate & overseas as well as local friends, but most years it doesn’t happen. I’m heading out now to buy bits to get the kids making a card a day each

  • Jac @ Common Chaos Chronicle

    Money is always our biggest struggle. It’s always tight so I need to budget everything!

  • http://www.facebook.com/BeccaMumby Rebecca Mumby

    I have the card sending problem. I don’t know anyones address anymore, so that doesn’t help.

    For the last 3 years my siblings and I have done Secret Santa between us and our partners, It means that everyone gets 1 nice present instead of a heap of crappy presents. It has worked very well, as it is less stressful. Also we send an SMS to everyone who is involved in the Secret Santa with our wishlist, so we are all bound to get something we all wanted.