My house is always a little full (or… a lot). I have a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and not much leftover energy for tidying once they are down. There is always something on the living room floor (and the kitchen floor, the office floor… well, you get the picture). Then November shows up, the Christmas bins come down from the attic, boxes start landing by the door, and suddenly my living room looks like Santa’s workshop exploded.
To top it off, last year we put a gate across the TV-and-fireplace wall, because my son Luca is a climbing tornado. That wall also holds our one perfect tree corner. Safety won over aesthetics (ask me about his first ER trip), so now our everyday stuff, the tree, and the season all crowd into a room (and behind a gate) that was already working hard.
So I try to get ahead of the season. Before kids, I was a product manager, so I am wired to spot what is coming and clear space for it early. Now that I’m a mom of two, I use the same systems to run my household.
When you declutter before the holidays, you make room for decorations, gifts, and guests before they arrive, instead of finding a spot for it all once the house is already full. Decluttering your home a few weeks out is far easier than doing it in the middle of everything.
When I talk about decluttering, I don’t mean getting rid of everything or making every room perfect (I definitely don’t have time for that). I mean clearing enough space that the house works for you, with a little room left over for what the month brings.
Declutter Before The Holidays
Before you start pulling things off shelves, decide what you want the space to do. Going into the holidays, our answer is typically function over a perfectly decluttered house: can guests sit down, can the kids find their shoes, can a tree fit where the tree goes? Focus on these areas of your home. Everything else can wait (or, if you’re like me, you can skip).
Should You Declutter Before The Holidays?
Yes, if you plan to host, decorate, wrap, or store anything between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. That covers most of us.
The more useful question is when, because we are all busy. For my family, the answer is in pockets of time. We try to start organizing in late October and early November, so we can get the tree up early. If guests are coming later in the season, we do another quick clear right before they arrive, which keeps the room that way through the visit. Either way, the weeks before the holiday season are the perfect time to do it: every item that leaves now is one you will not be moving around a tree, a guest, or a stack of gifts in December.
If you are reading this in December, it is still worth doing. Pick one room to do in one afternoon: the room guests will see first.
Why Declutter Before The Holidays?
The benefits sound obvious until you are the one hosting with a coat pile on your bed. Clearing out ahead of time buys you room for the tree and the guests, a lighter mental load in a heavy month, an easier time hiding and wrapping gifts, and a home that feels ready when people show up.
More room for guests and decorations
Decorations take up space, and the collection grows every year (I get into that in my post on how to prepare for Christmas). In our house, the tree goes in the corner behind Luca’s gate, which, for the rest of the year, is where the toys live. Getting the tree up means finding those toys a new home first. Clearing the surfaces and corners ahead of time means the tree and the lights get a real spot instead of landing on top of whatever was already there.
Less stress during a busy season
Every pile is one more thing in your brain, and this time of year it is carrying plenty already. For me, December is a long list on its own: the gift shopping, the school concert, the weather, and the family birthday that always lands between Thanksgiving and Christmas. A messy room on top of all that makes everything feel heavier, so I clear a few visible spots, and the room feels a little calmer.
Easier gift wrapping and storage
Gifts need somewhere to hide until they are wrapped, and then somewhere to sit until they’re needed. Clearing a shelf or a closet now gives every gift one address instead of three. It also makes you less likely to discover something in February, the way gifts used to go missing on my mom when I was growing up.
A more welcoming home
A guest wants a place to sit, a spot for a coat, and a clear path to the bathroom. We host Christmas Day, and everyone ends up in our living room and kitchen, so I focus on those rooms. A space with the surfaces cleared and the shoes off the floor feels calm to walk into, even with a full hall closet hiding whatever you moved to get there.
How To Declutter Before The Holidays
So, how do you declutter before the holidays? With little kids around, I keep sessions short in the busiest rooms. It’s never an all-day, whole-home overhaul.
Start small
Start smaller than you think. Pick one surface. The kitchen counter or your coffee table is a good first spot, since those collect everything in a house. Finishing one small spot in fifteen minutes shows you what done looks like, and it makes starting the next one easier. No one said decluttering has to be a mandatory, hours-long session.
Tackle high-traffic areas first
The living room and the entryway matter most, because they are where everyone walks in and where the tree and the coats have to fit. Our entryway is a table, a couple of bins, and a closet, and everything lands on top of them; the living room is toys, shoes by the door, and whatever the kids dropped on the way in. Clear the floor and the flat surfaces, corral the shoes, and box up anything nobody has touched since summer. Those are the spots guests notice first.
Sort into keep, donate, and toss
When I’m decluttering, I try to run a three-pile sort: keep goes back where it lives, toss goes out with the trash, and donate goes into a bag. Our donate bag then goes right by the garage door, so it makes it out of the house. If you keep starting a fourth ‘maybe’ pile because everything feels like it might be useful someday, you are not alone. I wrote about how to declutter when you want to keep everything, and it walks through the questions worth asking when you are holding something you cannot explain keeping.
Clear space for holiday items
Most decluttering advice stops at the donate bag. For the holidays, there is one more step: clear the spots the seasonal things will need before they show up. Empty the corner where the tree goes, clear a shelf for the gifts, and open a drawer for the wrapping paper and tape. Doing it now means you won’t have to shove things aside to make room later.
Decluttering Tips for Busy Families
These tips keep decluttering manageable when you are short on time.
- Set a timer. I use one for myself: fifteen minutes, one spot, stop when it rings even if the drawer is half done. Half a shelf is progress, and the timer keeps a short session from eating the entire nap window. Sometimes I have the energy and keep going; sometimes I move on. Either way, I’ve made progress.
- One area a day. Try tackling the entryway on Monday, the coffee table on Tuesday, and the pantry shelf where the baking supplies live on Wednesday. Several small sessions over a week or two, and the high-traffic rooms are done without a single lost Saturday.
- Let the kids help, but keep it realistic. When mine help, it mostly means singing the clean-up song and putting a few things in a bin before they wander off. Figure out what is age-appropriate for your kids to help with, and get them involved.
- Keep a donation bag going all season. Once the sessions are done, leave a bag or bin by the door for whatever you find in passing. The house keeps getting lighter without another project.
- Stop before the bedrooms. The living room, kitchen, entryway, and guest bathroom are the season’s rooms. Anything that isn’t part of hosting can wait.
The Rooms Your Holidays Happen In
If you do one thing from this post, clear the living room, entryway, and the kitchen, then decide where the tree is going before the bins come down. Those are the rooms you spend your holidays in, and getting them ready early lets the season feel like the fun part instead of one more thing on the to-do list. If those aren’t your rooms, clear your version of those rooms. Don’t make decluttering before the holidays a stressful task on your list.
Once you’ve cleared some areas, continue with the things to declutter before the new year.
Decluttering is one line on a much longer holiday list. If you’d like the rest handled before it piles up, start with my free holiday planning system below. And when you want the holiday season mapped out the way I do it for my own family, that’s what The Simplified Membership™ is for.
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