🎄 Week 6: Cozy, Calm & Low-Cost Christmas | MINIMALIST | Final Wrap-Up!

So who's looking forward to the Christmas season? Or perhaps you are feeling tired, you're kind of stretched thin. And I want to remind you here, it's absolutely normal to feel like that. There's a lot going on, but that's why I'm here. We're doing this cosy, calm, low-cost Christmas together. It's week six, the final week, week six of six. And today we're wrapping things up. So if you're ready to get cosy with me, let's dive in. Diane and Emmerich here. Here I am once again. I'm your cheerleader, your routines coach here on YouTube. And as I said, this is week six of six. We've been keeping things very, very easy, very cosy and very doable. We have been focusing on a different area of our homes each week for cleaning and tidying. I've also give you some planning ideas and of course, self-care ideas. And you've seen them. I have the free printables. We've had one for every week. They're all available for free on my blog, dianedenmark.com. And I want to be very honest with you here. I haven't done all the things that I have mentioned or all the things that are on the printables, but I have done bits and pieces. I'm feeling good and I'm not feeling stressed. And that's the main thing I want for you. Not this kind of perfect things and we don't have to be the martyrs and be doing all the things, but just to make it cosy, calm and low cost for you. So anyway, let's get into it for week six. And you'll see here, usually I start with the housekeeping, you know, where are we cleaning and decluttering. And we've worked through the bedroom, dining room, the entryway, the living room. We've been in the kitchen and last week was the bathroom, guest bedrooms. And today, what are we doing today? Well today, this is when we take our foot off the speeder and we're not going into detailed stuff. What I want you to do this week and moving forward is to get back to the basics of fly lady housekeeping. And that is doing a one hour weekly upkeep claim of your house. Not the whole house because we've been doing all the detailed stuff. But this is something that I return to again and again, if I've been, if we're back from summer vacation or perhaps your family have been ill and you need to get back into things and you don't know where to start or you don't know what to do first, this is it. So listen up. We've got seven small tasks that you do. What you do is you set a timer, a trusty timer, to take a little drink of your water. I've got hot tea today every time I say timer. And you do one of the tasks and then you move on. And know that the task doesn't have to be completed. It just gets us into that mindset of doing what we can and moving on to the next thing. So I'll tell you what the tasks are and you can do them in any order you want or you can spread them over the week. I've also got a little chart for kids. They can be doing their rooms while you're doing the house or maybe split it up between family members. So anyway, here are the seven things. Vacuuming, doing a good hoover. Just a quick hoover always makes me feel better. Dusting off the flat surfaces, 10 minutes on those. Emptying the rubbish bins, the recycling always makes the place feel fresh. Changing the bed sheets, we do ours every fortnight. Wiping down mirrors, any glass that you've got. I also clean the inside of the windows, I can get a lot done in 10 minutes. A quick mop of the floor. And I think that was it, was it? Hold on, let me just get... Oh, and the other thing is if you've got like piles of magazines or adverts, newspapers, things like that, you go through those. And this is a maintenance clean. We're not getting into the nitty gritty of things. It's a maintenance clean, which means that you can feel calm in your home. You can open your doors to invite others to come in. Because the idea is that in the month of December, we're not doing the zone cleaning stuff. If you're following me with the Flylady system, we're just doing maintenance cleans as you need to do them. And I like to make things fun. So I pop on my cordless headphones, I'll be listening to an audio book or some good tunes. But I would suggest if you haven't done it before, use my body doubling videos. I show you each of the stages. And I've actually got one that's like an hour long. And I will talk to you through the whole thing because sometimes I like those kind of videos because it stops me overthinking and getting sidetracked. I just follow along. So this week, you're just doing a maintenance clean of the house. Right, and on to the Christmas planning. And this week, we are looking at the big picture. We're taking a step back, looking at what we've done and what we just need to check up on. So here's, let me see, I've got five things for you. So number one, talking about food. And here, I'm not talking about festive food. I'm talking about the everyday meals. Because as we move into next month, month of December, things are crazy. And what we don't want to do is be going out and doing all the Christmasy, the festive stuff. And then, oh, we haven't planned what we're having for dinner. And we're ending up panic buying stuff and getting takeaway all the time. So take time today. Just note down a few of your regular family meals. What can you make with things that you've got in your store cupboards and if you've got a pantry. I've got a very small kitchen, but I've got a few items that I can always make dinner, even if there's nothing left in the fridge. And maybe now is the time if you like to do kind of batch cooking or double up, like if you're making one lasagna, it's just as fast to make two at the same time and freeze one for later. Okay, then on to the next one, which is paperwork and checking your calendar for December. Now, right now, I'm speaking from personal experience. Me and my besties were going through our diaries the other day, plotting in some stuff that we like to do. And we had a whole list of dates and we're coordinating things. I want you to get your diary, your planner, whether you use something digital or old fashioned or wall planner, get all the dates in there. Like maybe you're going to breakfast at school. That's a very common thing that we do here in Denmark. The parents come in and you're cutting out Christmas decorations at breakfast. Maybe you've got a work to do. Maybe you've got a church carol service. Get everything down into your planner, your diary, your calendar. And also I want to remind you here, it's okay not to attend everything. Be very clear on how much energy you've got and where you want to put your energy. You don't need to attend everything, but get all the dates in so you're not missing anything. And that's also with regard to the food. That's also going to show you that, oh, that day we're rushing around. We've got football practice and then we've got a nativity play at school afterwards. Those are the days that you can plan really easy meals or plan just to get a frozen pizza and a bag of salad. Take the easy route. So get all those dates round up and write them down. And just for fun, do you want to hear what my besties, my Danish besties, because I've also got stuff planned with other people. We have got the cookie exchange. I'm hosting that. We've got a Christmas crafternoon. That's when we get together and we sit and hygge with lots of good things to eat and drink and we sit and cut out Christmas decorations. Helena and I, we are doing a sing and sail. It's a little cruise around the canals after dark at five o'clock in the evening here in Copenhagen. You sing along. Somebody's playing Christmas songs on the guitar. Got a Christmas party with my link ladies club, my international ladies club here in Copenhagen. Oh, and a big Christmas tradition here for me and the besties is to go into Royal Copenhagen and they have kind of featured Christmas tables. It's different people who decorate the tables and that's always fun to look at. Right, but let's move quickly on to the next one. Number three, what have I written down? Oh yeah, wrapping and gifts. Now we've talked a lot about gifts where we can stop the spending, where we can cut down on the gifts that end up being clutter. But again, if you are giving gifts or making the Christmas gifts, that's me. Let's finish those off. Make sure you've got your sellotape, your wrapping paper. Maybe you've even got a place in your home where you can set up a little kind of wrapping station because there's always something last minute. And as I said to you last week, I always keep a few clutter-free gifts, usually food gifts, like maybe it's a kind of festive jam or a box of cookies. I wrap those up and I've got them ready. So if there's a last minute secret Santa or hostess gift, I'm covered. Oh, and number four, let's have a wee look at our budget. Think about your spending, okay, because I know when we kind of panic if we've not got a plan for things, that's when we kind of veer off course and we're buying stuff at the supermarket that we don't need instead of sticking to the list or we're buying gifts that are a bit more expensive than we wanted to buy because we haven't really thought about it. Look at your budget this week. What is left to buy? Do we really need to buy more of X, Y or Z? Let's take a reality check with the spending, okay, especially with Black Friday coming up. I'll be doing Green Friday here in Denmark. I've already got my stuff ready, my donations, and maybe I'll find something for Christmas gifts, free Christmas gifts. Right, and number five, this is one of my favourite ones for this week. I want you to spend 15 minutes, again, set your timer, set your trusty timer. Here we go, a wee swig of tea, still hot, and I want you to decorate one small area of your home because I know I've been there, done that, put your hands up if you've done the same. When you're thinking about the decorating for, you know, for Christmas or for the holidays and you think, oh but it's going to take all day. I've been there, done that. I just want you to decorate, like, put a few things. I like to start with the kitchen. I've always got my nice candles, put out a festive tea towel, a hand towel. Just spend 15 minutes and do something and then you can relax and look at it and give yourself a wee pat on the back because we did speak about decorations at the beginning of this series. You were to check through them, go through them and declutter anything that you weren't going to use this year or you don't like anymore so we could give that to the charity shops. Hopefully you did that, and hopefully you know what's in those boxes. If you want help decluttering, I did a one-hour video last year because we're downsizing, moving into the city next year from a big old house to, yay, a small apartment, and I decluttered big time last year. If you want my decluttering help, I will put a link to that video. But just 15 minutes, you know, it could be as simple as just putting a couple of candles on the dining table. Just something a little festive. You don't need to be doing the whole house. Right, and then moving on to my favourite part, which is the wellbeing, the little self-care tips for you. As usual, they're usually no cost or very low cost. So first thing I want you to do, your mission, should you choose to accept it, or let me know what you choose to do this week. It doesn't need to be one of these things. I want you to write down, make a quick note down of any of your favourite Christmas TV series or a Christmas movie or Christmas books that you like to read or Christmas music, because one of the best ways that I love getting some kind of festive spirit is any of those things. And I'll try and make a video next month with what I'm listening to or what I'm reading. But it's really useful to have that list because when you don't know what to be doing, you can look at your list and it just makes us feel good. Just 10 minutes of your favourite Christmas movie, or I like the cosy crime and crime stuff. So that's number one. Second one. Okay, this is going to be a little cost involved. Low cost is to make a stocking, little Christmas stocking for yourself. Now this is especially for you if you don't do gift buying or you don't do exchanging with anybody else, and nobody is going to give to you. I want you to do a little stocking for you and just small things in it. I mean, it could be some tea bags, new, I don't know, sparkly nail varnish, some cosy socks, a little candle, chocolate bar or something, something healthy, just a little stocking just for you. Okay, so you can put that together and you can open it when we get towards Christmas. And the third one, which this is something that I mentioned quite often, but it's to reach out to a friend because often when we're rushing around doing stuff for everybody else, we can lose that kind of connection with other people where we're so busy in our heads doing all the practical stuff. So reach out to a friend. Maybe you want to write a Christmas card, a greetings card, a note. It can be as simple as a text. I'm always sending little messages to my friends with funny emojis, but just connect with a friend. And you may even want to put that into your diary and put it down for each week in December, writing a little note or reaching out to a friend because it's really that connection which brings us the happiness. Because there have been tons of studies about it. It's not the things that we have, it's the connections with others. So there you have it. Phew, did we get through everything? And I want to remind you here, as I said at the beginning, I haven't done everything that I've told you these past six weeks, but I've done a lot of the things. I'm really looking forward to the season with friends, with the family. I've got a few homemade gifts made. They're being wrapped this week and I'm just feeling good about it. And that's what I want for you. I want you to feel that everything's going to be okay. And again, we're not looking for the Instagram Pinterest perfect Christmas. We're looking for something that feels meaningful to you without us rushing around, without us overspending. And as I said, all the free printables, they're still going to be available on my blog, dianedenmark.com, all for free. And also, this is not the end of the kind of cozy Christmas stuff. As we move into December, I will be vlogging here from Denmark, giving you all the things that I'm up to. So, make sure you are subscribed, notifications on for that. My tea's still warm. I think we covered everything. And just look at today's video and tell me what's one thing that you can do that I've mentioned today. Just one thing. Let me know in a comment, one thing, and we'll be doing it together. And I'm going to give you a little shake of my pom-poms to get you on your merry way. So, all I've got left to say is live long and prosper. May the ho, ho, ho, cozy, calm, low-cost, minimalist Christmas hookah be with you. And I shall see you very soon with the rah, rah, rah. Okay, bye for now.