Simplify Your Holidays To Maximize Your Joy With These Strategies

The holidays are a season we always look forward to, but it’s also one of the most overwhelming times of the year. From coordinating holiday get-togethers and decorating, to gift purchasing, to thank you notes and christmas cards to make, the task list is seemingly endless and the timing of everything always feels like it has to be done all at once.

We’re huge proponents of making things easier on ourselves around this time of year (hello, self-care), which means minimizing heavy lifting in any areas we can. See below for some of our favorite strategies to stay sane and happy throughout the entire holiday season:

make no thank you a regular part of your vocabulary

Sure, the holidays aren’t the holidays without a little indulgence, but going all out on all the things is the fastest and easiest way to get burnt out. Saying no thank you goes way beyond declining a sugar cookie or two. It can also be applied to skipping holiday events, or even gift receiving. If there’s one thing that the pandemic taught us, is that it’s just as easy to have fun at home than it is to hop from one holiday party to the next - and it’s usually a lot less exhausting - and a whole lot less expensive. Cut out a party or two, and you’ve also cut out a lot of mental fatigue and a whole bunch of to-do’s, such as finding multiple holiday outfits or picking up multiple party gifts. As for gift giving, sometimes the best gift is peace of mind. By agreeing to not exchange gifts with everyone (think, skipping your friend circle or paring down with nuclear family members), you not only eliminate a huge task list, but you also eliminate the need for a crazy amount of follow up thank you notes, concerns as to whether gifts given were good enough, and also, a whole bunch of uneccessary items cluttering up your house.

Consolidate your holiday card and by all means, go digital

One of our favorite holiday strategies has been to compile holiday greetings from the multiple extended branches of the nuclear family into one singular card - and to do it online. Ideally, opting for an online service that makes customizing your design is a massive help. Not only does it save you time and energy when it comes to the design itself, but it’s also a great way to optimize the sending and delivery process as well.

We’ve tried multiple online resources for creating our holiday cards. As one of the few websites that allows customers nearly unlimited color options (and with immediate previews so you don’t have to guess how it all comes together), Basic Invite is our number one suggestion. Select a design, and then adjust the color of each element on the card itself. Being the aesthetic junkies that we are, we truly appreciate that there are over 180 colors to choose from. Plus, customers can order a custom printed sample ahead of placing the order, so you can experience the final product in all its glory - including paper quality and how the images might print.

Plus, if you have a special announcement to add in to your holiday card, like a baby announcement christmas card for example, there are great options for that already baked into the Basic Invite repertoire.

Basic Invite also has over 40 different envelope colors to choose from, so you match or mix with the card itself. And all of the envelopes are peel and seal so they can be closed quickly and securely, which is a bonus for process.

Lastly, Basic Invite has an address capturing service that allows customers to share a link on any social media to request friends and family’s addresses. The addresses are stored in the customer’s account and can be selected during the design process. So collecting and consolidating addresses (which in our opinion is the biggest challenge when it comes to holiday cards) is a snap. They also offer recipient address printing at no cost on all card orders.

Right now Basic Invite is offering 15% off with coupon code: 15FF51  so sticking to a holiday budget just got a little bit easier.

Repurpose the Same Gift

Another tried and true gift idea that our family just recently implemented (and that has worked wonders) is to find a more universal yet thoughtful gift that we could gift to literally everyone on our list. This year, for example, we went corn harvesting as a family and collected quite an amount of popcorn corn, still on the cob. Not only did it tie into something we did ourselves, but we got to spend an evening as a family trimming the cobs and tying them together in sets of three to make beautiful gifts for not only our friends and family, but also co-workers, delivery people, and more (including all those few people you always forget about at the last second). It was a great experience as a family, a unique gift, and a great conversation starter. We even got to pop a few cobs with friends and family, turning the gift into an even broader experience.

Do you have any strategies for simplifying the holidays to add? We’d love to hear about them!