House & Holiday Plan 2014 Has Begun

Week One:  Planning and Paperwork

So this past Sunday kicked off the House & Holiday Plan for 2014.  Each week I will attempt to declutter my home while getting ready for the upcoming holidays.  I was so excited and motivated that I decided to start a little earlier.  Starting with 'control center', my somewhat home office.

One day last week I came in from work, walked straight into the guest bedroom and just started cleaning and decluttering.  I went through the pile of paper that had been sitting on my desk, shredded/tossed what I no longer needed and gathered up and sorted everything else in nice manila folders.  Now all I need is a small file cabinet to keep everything in.  Until then they are neatly stacked on my bookcase.

Next I wiped down my desk, computer and printers (boy do those printers collect dust).  Then Wiped down the bookcase where I store my holiday notebook, recipe books, Christmas cards, etc.  Looks really good in there now.  I can find what I need and everything is at the ready.

In addition to decluttering paperwork, there's the planning to do.  But first, clean out my holiday notebook.   I pulled everything out from last year, stapled them together and placed them in the back of my book.  They will be used as a reference while planning for this year.  I already had the new sheets printed and ready to go in the book: the budget, shopping list, gift list, menu...  So then there was answering a few questions of myself like, How much in total do you plan to spend this year?  What amount will you spend on gifts? What special gifts do you have in mind? What type of food will you be serving Christmas Eve?  And so on.  The only thing left from this week's tasks is to complete the exercise.

Right now I'm feeling pretty good at what I've been able to get accomplish.  Mind you this is only the first week.  I'm hoping 'regular life' doesn't de-rail me too much the remainder of this year.