Preparing for the Holidays
The holidays are almost here, bringing families together to pass down traditions, enjoy delicious meals, and create everlasting memories. And while the holidays are a time of joy, preparing for festivities can feel stressful, especially if you're caring for an aging loved one. The good news is, there is plenty of time to prepare, and by taking a few steps early in the season, you can destress your holidays and focus on enjoying the company of your loved ones.
Deciding on Meals
Preparing holiday dinner menus that everyone will enjoy is challenging. You need to account for everyone's preferences and dietary restrictions, but putting a menu together early gives you time to check in with your family and make sure there is something everyone can enjoy.
If you're planning on preparing all the food yourself, write out what you want to make and the ingredients you'll need to purchase. If you have a smaller family, you can share the menu with everyone and ask for feedback or suggestions. Getting input from your family will ensure everyone will have something they like.
If you're hosting a potluck, you can create a Google sheet with everyone's name and share it with your family. Then everyone can type in what they're going to bring. This way, everyone knows what is expected of them ahead of time, ensuring everyone brings something different.
Finding the Right Gifts
Finding the right gifts for your loved ones takes particular thought and can be hard when you're trying to get everyone gifts last minute. Save yourself from the frantic gift rush, and start putting gifts together now. For larger families where it's expensive to buy everyone something, you may want to consider a gift-giving game such as Secret Santa or White Elephant.
For Secret Santa, each person in the family draws the name of another family member and is responsible for buying or making that person a gift. The idea is to keep the gift secret. Then on the day you exchange gifts, each person guesses who bought them the present.
With White Elephant, you set a price limit, and each person in the family buys something equal to the price value. Then on gift exchange day, everyone places the gift on a table or under a tree. Next, everyone draws a number. Then in order of the numbers everyone draws, people start choosing a gift from the pile. As each person picks a gift, they have to open it before the next person chooses. The following person can decide to steal the gift from any person before them or choose an unwrapped gift.
Decorating the Home
It's understandable if you don't want to decorate for the winter holidays in the fall, but taking inventory of what you have and what you need is an excellent first step to making decorating easier later. Start by finding all the decorations you have and sorting them into a keep and toss pile. Then, from the keep pile, you can figure out what you're missing and make a list of decorations to pick up. If you're purchasing decorations online, make sure to order them early so they arrive before the holidays. Plus, if you order early, you might snag some discounts!
How Visiting Angels Can Help
Even with proper planning, there's a lot of work that goes into celebrating the holidays. If you're the primary caregiver for an aging loved one, let the team at Visiting Angels Chelmsford help take a load off your shoulders. Our trained team of compassionate caregivers can help your loved one with personal grooming, medication reminders, transportation, mobility assistance, and more.
Our Chelmsford office serves those in Billerica, Burlington, Chelmsford, Dracut, Lowell, Tewksbury, Wilmington, Winchester, Woburn, and the surrounding areas. If you'd like to learn more about our services, you can complete this online form or call us at 978.244.0200.