Se7en Do Christmas: Step Se7en – The Christmas Clean-Up…

Our Christmas to Do List is in the home straight, I can’t believe we are practically there. Really, I can’t believe we are nearly there and we haven’t stressed out yet!!!

• Step 1: Operation Christmas Box – Done.
• Step 2: Christmas Cards – Done.
• Step 3: Plotting and Planning Gifts – Done.
• Step 4: Creating Gifts – A Gift List – Done.
• Step 5: Gift Wrapping – Busy with this… I am so bad at this that I have to rely on the father person and all in his own time!!!
• Step 6: Calendar Planning and Traditions – We are working our way through these…

The Christmas Clean-Up is really those last bits and bobs that need to be done before The Day…

1. We really have spent fifteen minutes maximum a day dashing through drawers and sorting through closets… neatening and tidying. Now we have a heap of things to donate. Everything is bagged and good to go…Not a problem we have a community centre down the road that takes everything and directs the goodies wherever they need to go.

2. We had our Cookie Swap on Sunday and I have a heap of cookies to donate… so the first thing on our final clean-up agenda is to stop by the Community Center and donate all our goodies and all our cookies.

3. I have this mad idea that everything needs to be perfectly clean and tidy and spruced up!!! Now after months of school and a new baby certain things around here are somewhat neglected: Our garden is shattered and needs a quick spruce up and I will call in my garden service of Se7en; Otherwise we will take a day or to this week to do: Loads of Laundry and some Mad Mopping. Just a bit cleaner than our usual sweep and dust. My little guys totally love it when we do a deep clean: they get handed a wet wipe and told to wipe down any dirt they find on the walls – and wet wipes work great for this (no drips!!!).

4. Finally decorating has begun, we normally do this the night before our Cookie swap but we forgot!!! I blame Hood #8, he is very distracting. We finally got our tree and a couple of decorations went up… we still need to do a bit more. Our kids normally do their own tree in the garden… and they began that today in full force!!! They will have finished up by Christmas Eve and I am sure that it will keep them pretty busy!!!

5. I always have last minute baking to do and I have to schedule that in. I stick to the basics: Chocolate Brownies and Jelly Bean Biscotti’s two batches of each and I am done.

6. We have a meal plan for the weekend and have been to the store and done our shopping – no more errands no more shopping, frankly if it hasn’t been done by now then we are never going to do it!!! And that goes for everything – even blog posts I intended to write can actually be written later – people will always need gift ideas I don’t have to complete my blog life by Christmas!!! In fact as soon as I get my diary for next year i can pop everything into the new year and keep on blogging with a list of posts good to go!!!

7. And here is a home truth that I have discovered over time, if it doesn’t get done it really doesn’t matter. Just let it go!!! If you forget something vital then ten years from now you will either have forgotten the whole incident or you will still be laughing about it!!! Try and see the humor in the inevitable hiccups now rather than waiting ten years to enjoy them!!!

This Post is part of The Thirty Minute Mom’s Challenge at Steady Mom.

P.S. While we donate everything we have to donate to the Living Hope Community Center in Cape town, there may be readers in Johannesburg who would like to donate educational toys:
Heleen Johnson of Thusanani in Johannesburg wrote to me asking if I could do a request for educational toys… And since it is the season of giving why don’t you give them a call if you would like to help them out… “As a Non Profit Organization in South Africa, based in Johannesburg, working in the field of Vulnerable and Orphaned Children, we would like to invite you give our contact details to any individual or organization who would like to donate educational toys through your blog.”