I want to immerse myself in joy during the holiday season—not stress! And yet “joy” for me means hosting a lot of events and shepherding our family through lots of rituals. In order to make both things true, I’ve had to get into the habit of using systems to reduce holiday stress!

Here’s a partial list of the kinds of things we have going on during the holidays:

• We host a Halloween party.
• We host an October Saturday Supper.
• We host a Friendsgiving celebration.
• We celebrate Matt’s birthday right around Thanksgiving.
• We host a Fondue Fun party around Christmas.
• We travel to see my family at Thanksgiving.
• We travel to

One of the most potentially stressful seasons is upon us: the winter holidays. Depending on what you celebrate, you have more or fewer holidays. I personally celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving, my husband’s birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s. Luckily, I have a lot of luck using a Fall To-Do List to keep the season more enjoyable than stressful. Here’s the list I pretty much recycle each year:

Fall To-Do List

General

• Schedule Saturday Suppers, Friendsgiving, Fondue Fun Party
• Send holiday card
  • Design in Canva
  • Print card
  • Address and stuff envelopes

Halloween

• Send out invite for our party
• Decide on Halloween costumes
• Make costumes
• Go to a pumpkin patch
• Make caramel apples

Matt’s

If you’re anything like me, you find it stressful to have a zillion tabs open on your browser. And if you’re like me, you always have a zillion tabs open anyway because you want to have your pages right at your fingertips. Enter my new stress reduction hack.

I started bookmarking my most frequently referenced pages and documents so I can close something when I’m not immediately using it but quickly open it back up when I want to use it.

I always keep two separate internet browsers running at a time. I use Chrome for my personal gmail account and Firefox for my professional gmail account.

That way, I … Read More