Guest Blogger: How to Reduce Holiday Stress & Enjoy the Season

Guest Blog Entry #32, Entry #332, November 15, 2010

Every year as a busy career mom, I’m trying to figure out ways to cut out holiday stress. For the last few year Amazon & Walmart.com have become my lifesaver at the holidays! No more spending time in line Christmas shopping and everything comes right to my doorstep, perfect!

Relax and enjoy the season

BUT I still need much assistance with the day-to-day of handling expectations of the kids, finances, juggling work with family and oh yeah.. ME TIME!

Leanne and Cheryl

Today, my guests are Leanne Chesser and Cheryl Wilms from WAHM (Work At Home Mom) Solution. It’s goal: to help work at home moms create success in their online businesses so they can stay home with their kids.

Leanne and Cheryl share with us tips today for helping reduce holiday stress and how to keep yourself healthy and sane to enjoy the season!

Reducing Holiday Stress: Tips for Moms

Can you believe that it’s November already? We sure can’t! Since it’s November, it means that the holidays are quickly approaching. And since the holidays can be a challenging time for moms, we wanted to give you a few pointers that might help ease your stress.

We teach a lot about planning from the inside out – – starting to work within yourself and then moving out to more tangible things. It’s no different with our tips to ease your holiday stress. So, our first tip is to consider why you do what you do during the holidays. Have you ever stopped to consider the reasons behind the busyness and activity? Are there things that are traditions? Are there things that are important to your family? Are there things you simply think you should do? Are there things that are just adding to your stress and busyness?

The next step flows from the first one. Consider what you need or want to keep. And consider what you can discard. Simplify your holiday preparations and celebrations based on your discoveries by discontinuing the things that don’t really serve a deeper purpose.

Next, schedule the tasks that you want to keep by recording them on your calendar ahead of time. Coordinate them with the rest of your daily things to do. This helps you to focus and it helps you balance things out so you’re not trying to do it all at once.

Also, keep a holiday to do list. Include when the task must be done and list it based on priority. This will help you remember the important things so you don’t have to come up with alternate solutions that might not be to your liking.

Make a holiday to do list

Here are some more tips to help with those tasks:

• Write out a gift list. Knowing what you want to get for everyone will give you an idea of where you need to go to find that item so you don’t end up spending time just browsing.

• Take advantage of early morning or late night shopping. It can be quite overwhelming to be in a rush, shopping for Christmas gifts in heavily populated stores. Allow yourself to go when the environment is less chaotic.

• Shop online and start now. Browse for great deals and purchase exactly what you want in the comfort of your own home, with the luxury of having customer reviews of the item on many sites. Oh, and shop in your pajamas if you want! May as well do it with some style, right? Additionally, many sites offer free shipping and Christmas wrapping services for less to worry about.

• Wrap your gifts right away, take advantage of gift wrapping services, or hire someone to wrap them for you.
• Make your baking easier by preparing a baking schedule, getting your kids to help (or not), doing a cookie exchange, or having stay at home moms do your Christmas baking (saves you time, tastes better than store bought, and helps a stay at home mom make some additional income).

• Plan your holiday meal with others. Do a pot luck or have each guest bring a planned item. Then it’s not all on you to prepare, cook and clean up from the meal.

Plan your holiday meal with others

• Purchase your non-perishables and frozen foods before hand – – much less to worry about when it gets busier.

• Cook your regular meals ahead of time during this more stressful time period so you can just take them out of the freezer and heat them up.

• Simplify your decorating.

• Delegate other household tasks, or if you don’t have anyone else to delegate to, hire someone to help, finances permitting. Hire a high school or college student to shovel your driveway. Hire someone to do your shopping. Hire extra help for housework. They’ll do a great job and they’ll be so grateful for the extra cash over the holiday season. Not only are you giving to yourself, but you are giving to others as well.

Relax and enjoy some “ME” time

In addition, stop & take a breath. Know that it’s a busier time with concerts, extra events, planning, activities, visiting and acts of service. Just relax and enjoy it and remember why you’re doing it. Maybe it’s a religious or spiritual celebration. Maybe it’s about family. Maybe it’s about giving. Focus on that.

Take care of yourself. Get enough sleep, eat right, don’t neglect your other tasks, and drink decaffeinated beverages (too much caffeine can accelerate your heart rate and does not help with stressful situations).

And don’t forget to have some “MOM-ME” time. Schedule your time like you would an important appointment. Do things with your time slot that you enjoy — this is not a time for you to clean the house or focus on other errands. This is more of a “sit down with a tea, snuggle up with a great book and cozy blanket” activity.

We hope these tips make the holidays a more pleasurable, relaxing time for you!

Leanne Chesser and Cheryl Wilms are coaches, consultants and creators of the WAHM Solution, a learning community designed specifically to meet the needs and requests of moms who want to become successful online. Leanne and Cheryl help work at home moms build their success from the inside out, through first discovering their passions,  purpose and power, and then building the business they desire. Learn more at http://www.wahm-solution.com.

For more holiday ideas on Stagetecture, click here.