Organizing Papers, Ugh! Part 1

Papers never stop arriving. The mail is delivered 6 days a week barring a holiday and even if most of it is junk mail that you throw away, there is bound to be papers that you end up with. If you are well organized then they will not clutter up your home, but how many of us are THAT organized? There are so many ways to organize your papers and the different kinds of papers that you may decide to keep, whether short term or indefinitely.

Everyone has a system for dealing with those papers coming in, although whether it is working well is another matter. It is a system even if the papers are piled or dropped somewhere. Most critical for the system is whether you know where to find things easily and are paying your bills on time. Yet, this often is not enough.

The first step is to figure out what you want to keep. Period. Start this simple. Is there a reason to hold onto something right now? If there is no reason to hold onto it, throw it away.

Next, with the things that you are keeping for right now, what is short-term and what is long-term?

Starting with the short-term papers: coupons, catalogs, and sometimes magazines are easily put into this category. Coupons and catalogs expire or become outdated. Find a place to hold onto these short-term papers where you know where to look for them. Make a point to look through the catalogs within a short time and decide whether it is now trash or something to hold onto for a while longer.

Some people keep catalogs until the next one arrives. If you want to do this, find a relatively small place to keep them. I have seen catalogs kept in a small drawer, an upright magazine holder, and in-box container just for them, to name a few. Creating a place to keep them that helps contain them temporarily helps to make sure that the older version can easily be thrown away after the newer one arrives.

Similarly, with coupons, if there is a small place you keep them, you can see when it is time to review them, purging anything that has expired, and reminding yourself what you want to use. They can be kept in an envelope, a small bin, in your purse, or wherever you find convenient and logical.

Magazines ideally are read before the next one arrives. If you enjoy the magazine and are loathe to just throw away the unread magazines, stop getting more until you are caught up and you can always start getting it again. Canceling a subscription or not renewing it is important in avoiding unnecessary clutter when you do not have time to read them. Try to be realistic about what you can read regularly; no one else can determine that for you.

Deciding what to do with the magazines after you have read them varies from person to person as well as the type of magazine. I am a fan of tearing out articles that you want to keep and finding a way to organize them that way. There are times when you want to keep the whole magazine though. My husband and I have a combination of both these approaches.

If there are articles you want to keep, one option that saves space in your home is to find them online and save them on your computer, where you can do keyword searches for them. If you keep the paper copies, create a way to organize them. You can put them into files with appropriate labels so can find them easily or create binders that keep them altogether.

If you are keeping the magazine as a whole, you also need to find a way to keep them organized. Theoretically, if you decide it is important enough to keep, you are going to want to have access to it at a later point or you do not want them to be ruined. They make binders that are designed to hold magazines without damaging them or what I like using are the magazine holders. The magazine holders can be as decorative or plain as you want and in different materials, from heavy cardboard to plastic, to metal ones. I use each holder for a specific magazine after it has been read and been moved into the keep category and they can be kept altogether.

Organizing papers is a detail-oriented process and I will begin the section on long-term papers in the next post.

Do You Have a Collection or Does a Collection Have You?

We all collect something. There is something that we value or are drawn to own. We have all heard of the stereotype of the woman with tons of shoes. I’ve known people who have collections of binoculars, watches, portfolio bags, muffin tins, CD’s, figurines, and the list goes on. It matters little what the collection consists of, we often have something we collect.

Recently we decided to go back to the House on the Rock. At one point I turned to my husband and said, “Now, this is where I would step in and say, ‘Do you really need more than 300 Santa coffee cups? How about we try to cut this down to a more manageable size?’” Although some were unusual or antique looking, most looked like the typical mugs you would find at Walgreen’s each Christmas.

And it wasn’t just Santa cups, but cigarette lighters, whiskey barrels, rifles, scrimshaw, and far more.

Alex Jordan collected things, to the point that he kept adding buildings to contain all the things he was collecting. This is not something that many of us can realistically do. If we run out of room to have access to or display the things we collect, we need to start to make hard decisions.

How often do we collect something and then stop to consider whether this still reflects who we are and what we want? We continue changing and evolving throughout our life and need to make time to re-evaluate what we have around us.

If you have been keeping up with my newsletter/blog you know that I recently went through my collection of class notes, some dating back to my middle school days. Taking the time and knowing it was time to part with these things, I was able to recycle more than 90% of the papers I’d saved.

On the other hand, I loathe parting with books. I was so pleased that, in planning our redecorating of a room, we had come up with a way to combine the functionality of holding more books, without limiting the use of the room. Although the total count of books is not yet complete, it looks like there will be more than 2,000 books in our home! (See why I think the term hoarding can too easily applied?) So far in the rearranging, I have only found 4 books that I willing to part with. Books hold importance for me.

Whatever we collect, the determining factor is whether there is room for the items. Are there things that we can part with, if need be, to make room for what we are determined to keep? Unless you have the resources of Alex Jordan and can keep expanding your house as your collections expand, you have a limited amount of space to work with and it is important to live well within those dimensions.

I want to be able to appreciate the items I value enough to keep. I do not want to be overwhelmed by the things surrounding me or even to become blind to them by their familiarity. It is a continual process. I periodically will look around the house with a critical eye, watching for things that have lost some of their value to me. It is important to not forget the things that are behind doors, in drawers, anything that is not immediately visible are worth going through.

Is there something you are reluctant to examine with the possibility of parting with it? When was the last time you looked through your collection and pared it down?

Don’t Get Stuck in Your Filing System

I realized recently that the way I was organizing my business paperwork was not working. How did I realize this, you ask? Well, I was dumping all the papers I needed to keep into a bin and ignoring it. Not good. At least I was keeping the papers all together, and when I needed to find something, I knew where to look.

As you have probably guessed, I have embarked on the task of setting up a better system for myself.

There are many aspects to setting up a filing system as well as choices to make about the organization of it. For myself, I have always preferred handing folders with broad categories, with ordinary file folders sitting within the hanging folders. Sticking with what I know and know that I like, I began sorting my business papers.

The problem arose when I found myself getting frustrated with the broad category names I should give. Interestingly, on the NAPO member listserv recently there was a discussion on creative file names. This was fascinating to me as I have always been quite perfunctory with my filing labels. Yet I see the value of funny and silly names – it can be a way to make the dreaded filing more interesting, even bringing a smile when the names are personal to you. As Kate Varness of Green Light Organizing wrote, “The more a title makes her smile, laugh, or look aghast, the better she will remember it and the less she will dread it.”

There were interesting ideas shared on the forum and one was to call a file “Toupee” instead of the more typical “To Pay.” Now I do not even have such a file name, yet if someone uses this, the more creative name is undeniably more fun and silly. It can lessen the sinking feeling of pulling out the contents and sitting down to deal with it. Another idea was “Stuff I look for but can never find” and how great a file name if the contents do not fit somewhere else logically or easily.

Now, back to my recent filing dilemma. The whole point of broad categories is that there are several file folders within each, and this helps narrow down where things can go. Yet, with my business papers, I am finding that I do not have that many files. This makes broad categories seem cumbersome. Also, there are some papers that feel like they could fit into more than one broad category.

When helping clients with their filing, I advocate that the system meet their needs and function in a way that makes sense to them. I thought I knew what was best for me. I was wrong! It brings the point home that different things can require different approaches and how we need to always be open for revisions.

The files that I established years ago still work well for me. I know where things go and everything is logical for me. The business files are not even going to live in the filing cabinets. Instead, I decided I wanted to use an old file bin I had handy. I realized that if I was to put them in the filing cabinet, I would have probably just labeled a hanging folder “Business” and put all the files within that category.

My thinking needed to shift a little and I needed to reject the idea that I had to do things for my business papers in the same way I have done my other files. I have so much on the computer anyway that is well organized and the papers for my business are minimal. In addition, it is easy to create hanging file labels at a later point if it becomes necessary.

There are so many different ways to set up your filing system, from the everything is simply alphabetical to having hanging folders and file folders within them. Some people put the most recent item in front while others put them in the back. I’ve known people who have not even used files, but instead, used manila envelopes or accordion folders. There is no right way to handle your papers.

However you choose to organize things, it needs to make sense to you. You need to be able to put things away and even more importantly be able to find them. As I recently discovered, you also need to continue to be flexible, even when you think you know how you like things organized!

Purging School Papers and Why Saying Hoarding Should be a Crime

I mentioned that doing the room re-vamp is a good excuse to sort through some old papers. The truth is, the little 2 drawer filing cabinet I picked up in college contained these college papers so well, they were together and out of the way. With all the things in life that needed to be done, I had no pressing need to pull out those papers and go through them. That is, until we decided to empty the room and remove the little filing cabinet! Fortunately, by then I had already decided that I needed to go through them and purge them.

But first, before I go on, I have a confession to make. I hate labeling behavior. Doesn’t make a difference if it’s mine or someone else’s. I just do not see much value in applying labels and see that they can too often apply to a wider audience. The problem lies in the negative connotations that we associate with the labels and being reluctant to think of ourselves with these labels. I am thinking of “hoarding” and in writing this I decided to look up the definition. According to Merriam Webster, hoarding is “the act of collecting and hiding or storing (esp. valuable items) for preservation, security, or future use; treasure up (esp. money); store in the mind etc.”

I was working with a woman who had labeled herself in this way. I was talking to her and mentioned that I struggle with “hoarding” too. As an organizer, she dismissed my claim, unable to believe that I hold onto things more than I probably should. Yet, the truth is that there are things that I am reluctant to get rid of. I believe that we each have things that we hold on to, things that someone else might not see the value of, and organizing is about finding places for the things that matter to the individual. The important piece about holding onto things, is making a place to keep those things we value, and as long as they have a logical place and do not hinder life, it does not matter how or what we collect.

At this point, I am almost embarrassed by the fact that I have kept all my college and, even worse, many of my high school class notes and handouts, and a few from middle school. I have lugged them through many moves and cannot say that I have used or read them since I acquired them. Many years ago, I did gather each class together, in either a three-ring binder or a folder, and labeled each of them. They lived easily together. As I was moving them out of the room, I made sure to keep them all together.

Despite my not looking at them for so long, I think it is important not to just toss them. I have been going through them, looking at the name of the class, which helps me know if there are likely things I might want to save, and directing me on how much time I might spend on going through the papers.

One of the first things I discovered, which validates the importance of going through things before tossing, was some drawings my best friend made on some poems I had written for a class. I have found other things that I still value and want to keep.

As I continue the process of reviewing these, it has become obvious that I will need a way to organize and store the papers I still want to save. I am pleased because I also can see how much I have decided to get rid of and that far outweighs what I am keeping. The things I still feel are important also show me what I am still interested in and value having information on.

Here is a YouTube video of the process of going through old notes and papers.

Some of the notes and papers I have saved are the reproductions that classes have included as part of the required reading. I find this is one of the hardest areas to sort. I am an avid reader, and books are one of the things that I am loathe to part with, so I will take more time going through these photocopied essays and poems. They were useful for the class itself since they were organized by the order they needed to be read. One of the major reasons that they are not fully functional as they are currently is that I do not really know what I have amongst them.

Likewise, I have made another YouTube video for the reproductions from classes and how to approach the task of sorting and saving what is important.

Maybe I am unique for holding onto school notes and papers for so long, even finding some that date back to middle school, yet it was obviously something that I valued. Does it make me a hoarder? Does it matter? The crucial point is how we do not let our collections interfere with living life and to organize them so that when we want to appreciate those things, we are able to do so.

Coping with Feeling Overwhelmed

With all the work and chaos that re-doing the room brought about, I started thinking about the feeling of being overwhelmed. No one is exempt from feeling overwhelmed at times in life. Some people even seem to be perpetually overwhelmed, rarely feeling in control and at peace.

I like to tell my clients that things have to get worse before they get better, and oh, did things get worse in my house when we were redoing and reorganizing the room. I hate admitting it, but in some ways when it comes to my own space, I can be a bit high strung. The mess that accumulated in every downstairs room from emptying the one room was something that had me feeling overwhelmed. Everywhere I looked, there was a mess. As I looked around, I was overwhelmed with all there was to do, feeling a little hopeless at dealing with it promptly. As much as I might not want it, as much as I might shake my fists in frustration at it, life did not stop just because I was re-organizing a room.

I had so many tasks on my list that it felt hard to make any real progress – completing one task still left me with a long laundry list. We’ve all been there – the battle that it feels like you cannot win. Part of the cost of feeling overwhelmed is that we are essentially beating ourselves up. We have lost any real sense of hope. We start thinking that there is no escape and no end. It is hard to move anywhere within ourselves when we are stuck with such thinking. We need to give ourselves a break; would you be so critical of your best friend for being in the same situation? We often offer much more leniency to others than we do to ourselves.

What I tell myself when I start to fall into this self-defeating thinking is that it takes consistent, small steps. It is rare that we have concentrated large chunks of time or energy to delve fully into fixing the various things that need our attention and getting through the things that have built up with time. This also does not address establishing new and more constructive routines. Small yet regular steps are enough to get through the disorder, as well as make sure things end up where they belong.

The way that you decide to react to the feeling is what matters most. If we let ourselves become stymied by feeling overwhelmed, it can be that much more difficult to start moving forward. Facing difficulties in life, whatever they might be, is challenging. It is easy to wish for an easy, fast solution.

Yet, if we can approach the difficulties life throws at us with determination, we will get through it and build up future confidence in ourselves. We can even “fake” feeling positive about our situation to help move us through the challenges we face; practicing the adaptability we would want.

I can tell myself that all it takes is the small, regular steps and even believe it, although it does not always feel that way. I wish it actually eliminated all feelings of being overwhelmed, but it does not always work that way. When I start taking those small steps though, I am reminded of how even 15 minutes can make a dent into what I am dealing with.

How resilient do you want to be? Do you admire people who seem determined to adapt to whatever life hands them?

I read a study dealing with resiliency regarding facing health issues. This applies to anyone facing any situation that feels overwhelming. Those people who scored high on resiliency also scored high in feeling “a greater sense of control over their lives, greater tolerance of negative emotions, trust of their own instincts, and use of spiritual practices to cope.”

Isn’t this what we all want? A way to adapt and avoid unnecessary stress despite what life brings our way.

Take the first step, take a little time every day and start addressing the things that are causing you to feel overwhelmed.

Oh, and the stuff in my house that ended up everywhere during the room re-organization? It’s finally getting back into place, while some of it is finding various new homes. If you know anybody who’s looking for a desk, let me know I have one needing a new home.

Change Your Resolution for the New Year

Tomorrow night we will celebrate by ringing in the New Year. It is typically a time for us to look back at the past year, evaluating the events and choices, and then set some goals for the coming year.

What I find interesting is that we often are inspired to do those same things at other times in our lives, moments that speak deeply to us. These personal moments of retrospection seem to have more power and influence than this externally prescribed time of New Year’s to set resolutions for ourselves.

A friend of mine felt this strongly after she had her first child, it altered her perspective on family, even to the extent that she felt that someone without kids would not understand the transformation she felt. Another friend was sharing that she experienced a similar feeling after she got married. I went through one of my own when I moved back to Wisconsin after 11 years.

The universal process they talked about was reevaluating their lives, their friends; examining the path they were on. They were choosing the values and direction they wanted to take in their lives.

For me, in moving back to the place that had always felt like home, I felt strongly that I was starting over in a way, or at least beginning a new chapter. After settling into my apartment, I wrote letters to various family members, feeling the importance of cherishing the family we are given, even if we do not always relate to them very well. I wanted to try to connect and resolve any issues. In response, I received a touching call from my aunt and we had a beautiful, honest conversation.

Why then do we get sucked into the mass mentality that we need to do this each year at this specific time? Why is it only once a year?

It is not a bad time to look back, to think about the direction you want to take in your life. We all hear about the lack of follow through on New Year’s resolutions. Making goals for yourself and having to think about how you failed is setting yourself up for guilt and disappointment, especially if your goals are aimed at a year’s time.

Therefore, I challenge you to think smaller. Instead of trying to figure out the whole year in advance, think about what you want in the next quarter. Just like with time management issues, keeping the list relatively short, avoiding overwhelming yourself with too many things, and especially to keep it simple.

Set an appointment with yourself to reevaluate things again. Coming back to Wisconsin, a state with distinct seasons that I had missed, I tend to look at things according to the seasons. It is a clear reminder of the passing of time and I use that to inspire introspection and a fresh time for resolutions.

What I despise most is seeing how we end up beating ourselves up for the failures of not achieving the goals we’ve set. Losing hope in ourselves for being able to follow through on our resolutions is the ultimate defeat.

All the more reason that we think smaller and aim for the shorter term. Life is constantly changing, and we can be that much more prepared to adapt to the events and maintain our footing.

What’s my New Year’s goals? I am going to embrace and adapt to what life brings my way. I am going to set small, short term goals and work slowly towards them.

I’d love to hear what your New Year’s goals are!

Appreciate Your Gifts This Christmas… But Don’t Let Them Become Clutter

My husband was teasing me the other day, come Christmas morning I am very methodical. I open a gift, look at it briefly, and am moving on to the next gift. I tend to do this regardless of how much I like it; oohs and aahs rarely come out of me. A friend we were with at the time commented that I was like a child, eager to see everything. On the other hand, I find my husband a bit of a dawdler; he spends what feels like a lot of time on each item. Along the same lines, after all the gifts have been opened, I am eager to get them put away! You can probably guess that my husband is the opposite; he likes to have them out for a while.

It is humorous to me that we are exemplifying the two extremes. Although I have obviously not been the best example, my philosophy is to find a middle ground between these approaches. With Christmas fast approaching, keep control of your home and avoid letting the new gifts become clutter while making sure you take time to appreciate them.

I recommend that you have a bag to gather all the wrapping paper as the gifts are opened. It is convenient to reduce the clutter since there will be all the actual items around, and having the ribbons, paper, and packaging put immediately into a bag will help eliminate additional stuff.

I was raised to write thank you notes, and find it simpler to pile the gifts according to the giver, and after the notes are written, I can begin to put them away. Depending on how eager I am to get things put away or how much I end up procrastinating writing those thank you notes, sometimes I will write out a list of the items based on the piles I’ve made. I have found the idea of recording the gifts for a thank you note as I go to be a distraction from engaging myself in the experience of the day.

In looking for a compromise between my rather perfunctory approach and my husband’s lackadaisical approach, we have arrived at some wonderful compromises. It uses the middle ground concept that I strive for, the balance between putting things away immediately and leaving them strewn about indefinitely.

The resulting compromise varies depending on what type of item. When we get CD’s, we put them all near the stereo where we can be reminded that we want to listen to the new ones. Similarly, the books are gathered together so we know what is new and can grab them, yet are not disappearing into the book collection. If it is clothing or kitchen items, we like to get them washed as soon as possible so that they can be appreciated more promptly.

Some organizers believe that for every item that comes into your home, something else must leave. I cringe at that idea if held that strictly. The concept holds some value, and Christmas can be a time to consider what you could part with since it is a time when you are likely to be acquiring a larger quantity of things. Our houses do not expand with our stuff, so we need to be able to get rid of things!

Consider the idea of removing some old items as you put the new things away. It is a great time to engage your children in deciding on some old toys to give away – they have just gotten all these neat new toys – and in keeping clutter down, teaching them that it is time to make room for the new things. This can apply to yourself as well, since you have new clothes, you could purge some other clothing that is getting older.

Valuing the experiences that this holiday brings would be minimized if we allowed the gifts to create clutter in our homes. Enjoy the gifts and find ways to maximize your pleasure at being so loved.

Expressing Our Love at Christmas

My absolute most favorite memory of Christmas comes from my childhood with my mom. She would make tons of cookies every year. Looking back, I am amazed at how many different kinds of cookies and bars would emerge from the kitchen during Christmas time. It is especially neat since she admittedly does not relish cooking. Most of the cookies she’d made would be arranged on plates, wrapped in plastic, and given away to various people.

The meaning of Christmas is about expressing our love. We use gifts to express some of that love we feel, yet we need to make sure that we do not lose the true intent. It becomes so easy to get sucked into the retail propaganda that we need to find that perfect gift, we need to spend a certain amount of money, or even give a certain quantity of items.

Remind yourself of your most cherished memories; think about what you would want your children to remember when they get older. As lovely as getting a great gift can be, and I have fun memories of waking up to a glorious 10-speed bike with a giant bow in front of the tree, this is not what I remember most fondly. Nor do the happy memories of gifts given warm me more than the wonderful plethora of cookies.

In talking about expressing our love at Christmas and the connection that has with giving and receiving gifts, there are a couple of things to think about and keep in mind while we finish the shopping and wrapping.

One, we have all faced the temptation to get that special gift for a loved one. One memorable occasion when I was a teenager, I wanted to give my mother a Hummel, since she loved them so much. My eyes were bigger than my appetite with that one – and bigger than my meager savings from my allowance. I had high plans to save up $300 so I could get it for her. Somehow, I never did pull that off, yet in looking back at it now, it was just a symbol. It was this thing to express the depth of my love; only it was just a thing.

Two, as I consider the powerful memories of holidays past, one year I received this incredible gift. The cost of it had to be negligible since it was paper and plastic binders, yet it speaks to the power of thoughtfulness of the giver. The gift was of my poems; typed up, titled, with a table of contents and a copyright symbol, presented to me as books. Ah, the teenage fantasies of fame, and regardless how time has changed my perspective, it was truly a wonderful gift.

These stories illustrate how the emotion is the bottom line. I wanted that “perfect” gift because I thought it could communicate how I felt better than I could; yet, the thoughtful gifts are most profound. The heartfelt expression of love has the most meaning, and no amount of money or quantity gathered under the tree can compare to a gift from the heart.

Thinking about the things that speak to you most deeply from your past, those Christmas memories that you would not trade for any gift, can inspire you on how to spend this Christmas and all the ones to come. You’ll realize what you want to create for your family and practice experiencing Christmas for what it is meant to be. When you do, you focus less on the actual items, can stick to your budget, and are less likely to get caught up in the purchases. Like Thanksgiving, it is about the experiences, not in trying to create a perfect day.

What are you going to do to create wonderful memories this year?

Loving What You Own

When was the last time you looked around your home with a critical eye? Do you truly love and value the things that you have out in your home? What about the items that you have in boxes?

The things that you keep take up valuable space, whether they are out where you can see them or if you put them into containers and rarely look at them. Too often, we become blind to the items around us, they fade into the background and we do not even think about them.

It is challenging to take that emotional step backwards to evaluate your belongings. Yet, if they are not dearly loved, is there a good reason to keep them?

You deserve to be surrounded by things that make you happy and content. The items that you decide to store need to be valuable to you, worth the space that they require for storage. More and more people are renting storage units as their homes are getting too filled with stuff. Do you want to be one of those people?

I have a memory box for some well loved items from childhood and adolescence. I actually review it periodically and make sure the things are still important enough to keep. It needs to stay a reasonable size though, and I make sure things are worthy enough to be in there.

It can be helpful to think of your things deserving love. This is anthropomorphizing, attributing personality to inanimate objects, yet if you think of it in this context, you could discover how much you are willing to part with. Someone out there would be thrilled to have this or that item from your home and actually need or appreciate it. Thinking about your belongings in this way can help determine whether it is something that is worth saving.

There are so many different options for finding new homes for your things, ways for them to be valued by someone else.

Charities and shelters are often grateful to receive items to support people who are struggling. There are many varieties in each city with their own policies and what items are most needed. You can check out the ones I’ve bookmarked for Milwaukee on my delicious site under donating.

Swap parties are growing in popularity as a way to share and help others in your community. I spoke at the Holistic Mom’s Network and they had arranged one, where the focus was children’s stuff, and toys and clothes were exchanged. Of course, if the goal is to not bring more stuff home, this may not be the way to go about it!

One of my favorite ways to give items away is FreeCycle. Their mission is about reusing and to help keep things out of our landfills, and who does not appreciate that! You need join (free) and make the effort to post your things, but the person you select is responsible for picking up the items. You choose who receives your things and it is obvious that your belongings are going to people who could use them and also likely that they can be re-posted later to go on to someone else who will appreciate them.

I challenge you to try to reevaluate the things you have in your home regularly since our feelings and thoughts about things are constantly changing and evolving. If someone you knew said they would really like such and such, would you mind giving it to them? If so, you likely do not need to keep that item and finding a better home for it would clear up your space in the process.

What are you going to find a better home for?

The Perfect Holiday… That Wasn’t Perfect

Thanksgiving is the holiday most overwhelmed with volunteers – and it is a time when we think about what we are thankful for and hopefully share that with those we care about. Along with thinking about the things we are thankful for, it is a time that many people try to find ways of giving back. This is the time of year when we think about all the people who are less fortunate than we are, as well as how we might give back some of the blessings we have.

In this season of giving, if you want to find ways to give of yourself, look around your home and find things to give away. You will give yourself freedom from clutter, and help someone else. Let’s take a look at that next week, when I’ll discuss more ways of thinking about your belongings and parting with them. If you’re like me, you won’t have a lot of time to think about the items in your home until after this holiday has passed.

Sometimes we have expectations of ourselves, maybe of others, about how our holidays are supposed to go. People often worry about the details of the meal or the state of the house, imposing the image that everything needs to be perfect, some sort of Donna Reed type holiday. Holidays seem to bring this out even more strongly than at other times. Regardless of what you have planned, make a point to relish the time with your friends and family and the experiences the holidays will bring. After it is all over, that’s what you are going to remember, not whether the turkey was a little dry, or if your house wasn’t perfect.

If we go back to the intent of Thanksgiving, it is all about getting together with those you care about and being thankful for the things you do have. You have a home, food, and loved ones to be grateful for. Those dust bunnies, the chores you didn’t get a chance to do, really are insignificant compared to all this.

Of course, it’s easier said than done to step outside yourself enough to catch yourself from worrying about minor details. Try reversing the situation. When I’m a guest and the hostess can’t stop worrying about getting everything right, I feel sad that the intent of the holiday is lost. And the thing is, if she hadn’t drawn the guests’ attention to the minor details, no one would have even noticed them. Reversing the situation lets you relate to this, and it is a safe wager that your guests are simply grateful to be included and are not aiming to be critical of the details.

With it being less than a day before Turkey Day, take a deep breath and relax. Whether you are responsible for many details, just bringing something, or simply showing up, this is a day to realize all that you have to be thankful for. Challenge yourself to enjoy this day and appreciate all that you do have.