In this first episode of the five‑day Holiday Blitz, Lisa Woodruff guides viewers through a mindset shift and practical framework for creating a less stressful, more meaningful holiday season. She opens by emphasizing that each minute spent planning can save four to five minutes in execution, and stresses the need to pause before diving into endless checklists. The core activity is a family‑focused questionnaire that uncovers favorite foods, activities, decorations, and traditions. Lisa shares personal anecdotes—how simplifying cookie recipes, ordering Thanksgiving dinner for leftovers, and reviving a holiday card tradition saved time and increased joy. She highlights the importance of asking each family member what they truly enjoy, delegating responsibilities (e.g., letting a teen handle gift‑giving), and considering creative shortcuts that bypass unnecessary work. Throughout, she provides printable worksheets for Thanksgiving and Christmas, explains how to use them during a dinner conversation, and directs viewers to the Organize365.com/Holiday‑Blitz resource page for the downloadable tools. The video ends with a teaser for Day 2 and an invitation to continue the planning process.
Chapters
It is day 1 of the Holiday Blitz. I am so excited to be helping you get your holidays organized and have the most positive, most memorable, most stress-free holidays of your life. We're gonna take 5 days, and in these 5 days, we are gonna really ask ourselves questions we maybe have never asked ourselves before About the holidays, but there's one thing that I know. Every minute that you spend planning, you save 4 to 5 in execution. And when it comes to the holidays, it's not necessarily the planning as it is the thinking about what you want the end goal to be. So often we have so much to do at the holidays that we just start on our checklists and we just start checking things off from now until New Year. And then we go, what happened? I didn't even get to enjoy anything. So we're going to stop, we're going to take a look at what we're going to do for the holidays, and we're going to move forward. So today is all about thinking about the holidays, thinking about what does your best holiday look like. All right, you maybe have never done this before. For many years I didn't do this either, just for time and financial reasons. Like, I didn't want to think about what I wanted the holidays to look like because I couldn't afford to make that happen, right? Or I didn't have the time necessary to make that happen. So we are not looking for perfection. We're not trying to overhaul everything you've ever done for the holidays for years, just making incremental progress every single year. All right, page 2. What are your family's favorites? This was an eye-opener for me years ago when I did this for the first time. It was probably 4 or 5 years ago, it was after I had started organizing my house. The house was starting to get organized. I was starting to get a little bit of time, but honestly, I did not enjoy the holidays. There were a lot of things about the holidays that frankly made me a Grinch because I felt like everything was on me as the female head of the house to do, to make the magic, to make everything happen. And I just didn't really enjoy it. And I was doing things that I didn't enjoy and I didn't think my family enjoyed either. So I sat down at dinner one night. This is a great printable to just have while you're eating dinner and just ask these questions and document what your family says. This is when I realized that my family could care less that I was making a whole bunch of Christmas cookies, but they really wanted iced sugar cookies. So I just got roll-out sugar cookies, cooked them, and they just iced them. It took me 30 minutes, what used to take me a whole day and probably $100 worth of ingredients. So some of the questions we're going to ask is, what do you want to eat this holiday season? Especially as your family gets older, like I have an 18-year-old and 19-year-old now, the things they want to eat have changed from when they are younger. So what do they want to eat? What do they want to have in the fridge? What family activities do you want to do together? You know what my family still likes doing? Driving around and looking at Christmas lights. The kids still want to drive around and look at Christmas lights. I wouldn't think that they would want to do that, but that is something that they want to do. So what are some of the family activities that your family wants to repeat? A new tradition that we have is going to movies. Every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, we go to a movie as a family. And eating out. We've been eating out a lot more than we did when they were younger. This is a big one, and we're gonna get into this at a different day, but what decorations are important to you? Right now, when there's not a single decoration up in your house, ask your family what their important decorations are. Not while they're already up and they've seen them, But what do they say? My husband, it's the Christmas tree. He wants it up as early as possible and to stay up as long as possible. He doesn't want to put it up or take it down, but he wants it up and he loves the way the house feels when the tree is up and he's very sad when I take it down, usually in the middle of January, sometimes as late as March. He never complains because he loves it when the trees are up. I love baby Jesus in the manger that my grandfather made me. He made me a wooden manger. I love that. You know, what are the things that people mention? If they don't mention it and you're going to decorate your house, you don't have to put it up and see if they ask you. I have a little tiny wooden train that we put above our fireplace that used to be above my grandparents' fireplaces when I would go there when I was a child. That is also one of Greg's favorite things. So what do they remember? What don't they remember before you start unpacking all the holiday decorations? Will you host any visitors or are you doing any traveling? That seems like something you would obviously work on. And another one is, are you going to send holiday cards this year? So I used to send holiday cards for years and about 12 years ago I stopped. I stopped for financial reasons and I stopped for emotional reasons. I was done with sending out that Christmas letter. It just— there wasn't that much fun to report is all I have to say. And I felt like I was being judged on my whole last year by myself. So I stopped sending the Christmas card completely. for almost 10 years. Last year we sent a New Year's card just to our family. That was great. This year I've actually ordered the card. It's on its way. It'll probably arrive this week and I will send it out early like I did 13 or 14 years ago. You don't have to always send out a holiday card. You don't always have to do traditions that you've done in the past. But again, this is one that's really important to my husband, so that one has come back around again. All right, you have 2 more printables today. After you get that information from your family, just at dinner sometime this week, ask these questions. Then you can go ahead and we've specifically given you a sheet for Thanksgiving and a sheet for Christmas. Now in our family, we always go to my mother-in-law's on both holidays. She lives here local, but she just told me last weekend Christmas Day is going to be at my house, like for the first time ever. So I'm super, super excited about that new holiday tradition. And then also for Thanksgiving, one of Greg's biggest complaints is that because I don't make the turkey, even though I know how to make a turkey, there are no leftovers. Like, so there's no leftovers the whole Thanksgiving weekend because we eat at his mom's and he gets some leftovers but not the quantity of leftovers that he wants. So we were at Bob Evans this weekend having breakfast and I saw that you could order Thanksgiving dinner. And I said, great, we're going to order Thanksgiving dinner. And he said, we're not having Thanksgiving dinner at our house. I said, I know. I'm ordering Thanksgiving dinner so that you have a complete array of leftovers. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. He said, that's brilliant. So I ordered Thanksgiving dinner from Bob Evans for a family of 4. We're picking it up on Monday. We've got 2, you know, late high school, college-age kids who are gonna munch on this, and we're not gonna have to do any cooking. So you could think outside of the box. Just because you're not having Thanksgiving at your house, does your family want the leftovers? And if so, do you have to cook them? No. When you're asking these questions, What decorations do they like? What memories do they like? Then the next question is going to be, how can you get that end result? Not necessarily, how do you make it from scratch? I don't have to make a Thanksgiving dinner from scratch because I'm not cooking Thanksgiving dinner, but I can have Thanksgiving leftovers by purchasing them. There are a lot of things that we can do where you can skip the middleman, aka yourself, And get the result you want and what your family needs out of it without doing all of the work. So Thanksgiving and Christmas or whatever winter holiday that you celebrate, I'm going to ask you, who are you celebrating with? Where will you celebrate? What will you make? So what is your responsibility? And then ask your family, what's your favorite part of Thanksgiving? What foods do you love? What foods could you live without? What would you like to contribute this year? As your kids get older, ask them what would they like to contribute this year? What do they want to do? I know Abby's love language is gifts. She would love to be in charge of buying the gifts or giving everybody a little something on Christmas morning. So delegate out those ideas. Having conversations like this with your family will transform your holidays. They will make them so much more meaningful and you will feel as you're spending all of your time getting ready for the event that you're putting all of your time and effort into the areas that are most Meaningful for your family. All right, hop back tomorrow. We will hop into day 2. If you have not downloaded the printables, it is not too late. You can click on the link below in whatever video that you're watching or the link in my profile, Organize365.com/Holiday-Blitz. Thanks everyone.
