Originally published at Ignatian Spirituality
1. Clean the house, but only to the extent necessary.
I don’t mean scrubbing from top to bottom, like a winter form of spring cleaning, although, if you can do that, go for it. But clutter can get in the way of enjoying days that are meant for celebration. You may not have time to reorganize your kitchen cabinets, but you can probably find a box in which to put items you won’t be using again until after the holidays. While going through the closet switch-out from one season’s clothes to another, you have the perfect opportunity to get rid of clothing you don’t wear—and take it to a thrift store so that someone else can use it.
Clean by priority, choosing first the most important rooms, such as the living room or family room, or other parts of the house you like to decorate and spend time in this time of year. If my living/dining room is all spruced up for the holidays, it’s an easy bet that the office or my study or the guest bedroom is harboring extra stuff and will be in slight disarray for the next few weeks. But I can choose to let that
