Simplify: Taking It Slow During The Holidays
The obvious route to the holidays is to match everyone’s frenetic pace:
Shopping!
Parties!
Drink/eat too much!
Why not take it slow? Why not find imaginative ways to spend time, money and energy?
Make gifts, rather than buy everything: especially as our kids get older, we’ll be able to take advantage of this. This can be anything from a special collection of songs on a cd, to a collage of pictures to a grandparent.
Give an experience rather than a ”thing”: I regularly buy my wife gift certificates to a day spa nearby. This way, she can have a massage, get a facial, whatever suits her mood.
For any mall trips you do have to make, visit during offpeak hours: if I need to (and I did recently), I leave work between 2-3pm, plan out my stops and get in and out as quickly as possible. It worked! If this is not an option, shopping online is a good backup.
Enjoy not travelling, if you can: we are fortunate to have our families within 15-20 miles of us. So, we stay very close to home for any holiday. Each and every holiday season, I feel grateful that we don’t have to jump on a plane, or initiate a long drive to meet family.
Slow down: as we ease into this Holiday week, I hope to spend more time outside: playing with my boys, taking walks and getting in my morning run. For us, this is how to simplify our holidays.
