Celebrate the holidays this year with intention!! I’m bringing you 12 Mindful Days of Christmas – a series all about celebrating the holiday without buying a bunch of gifts for others! You can check out all the other days in the series here!
FRIEND!! I am so excited you are here. If you missed all the excitement about this on Instagram, let me bring you up to speed really quickly! I did a few Instastories a while back asking what kind of gift guides my friends over on IG wanted to see! I got some great feedback and ideas, and got to work on them!
BUT, the more I worked on them, the more and more I felt this tug at my spirit telling me this is NOT was I was supposed to be doing this year. I’ve been struggling with overspending each month and really need to get back in the right frame of mind financially. Sharing a bunch of gift guides (while they are FUN and I do enjoy checking them out for great gift ideas) and encouraging YOU to shop (whatever your financial status is) just really felt the opposite of what I was SUPPOSED TO BE DOING.
12 Mindful Days of Christmas
So, I listened to that tug and just made the snap decision to focus on mindfulness and intentionality this year, and encourage YOU to do the same! And that is where the 12 Mindful Days of Christmas comes in!
I’ll be sharing 12 ideas for you and your family to use to celebrate Christmas in a new way this year. I’m not saying that you can’t buy any gifts or anything like that, but I do want you to be intentional about how you spend your TIME and your MONEY this year (because let’s be honest, even if you shop online, there is a lot of BOTH invested during the holidays!) So let’s Make the Holidays Great Again (is that copyright infringement??) and celebrate 12 Mindful Days of Christmas!
12 Mindful Days of Christmas – DAY ONE
HOST A SWAP MEET!
Not only will this be a fun way to hang out with your friends, it might even save you some money on gifts and decorations as well!
Every year after Christmas, I always clean out my holiday decorations. I usually take what I don’t want to Goodwill and can I tell you a secret? I see bags and boxes piled high with Christmas decorations there! It seems that every year, people are getting rid of decorations that they don’t want anymore. So, instead of just donating it to Goodwill (or throwing it out altogether) how about you host a swap meet instead!
Make some apple cider, put on the Christmas music, and invite all your girlfriends over with their gently used Christmas decorations! Put it all out on display and let everyone shop around for things that they might like or need! Boom – new Christmas decor for you with $0 spent!
You can also do this with toys! We observe the “one in, one out” rule. For every new toy Jett gets, he has to donate one to someone who doesn’t have as much as we do. It keeps the toy insanity to a minimum in our house and teaches Jett about giving and the fact that we are very blessed with everything we have.
Send the kids out for the day with Dad or Grandma and clean out all your toys! Meet up with your girlfriends and swap away! You would be surprised at what you have that others may want, love, and need!
There are so many things you could swap out – dishes, kitchen equipment, clothing, movies, home decor… the possibilities are literally endless. What kind of swap meet will you host?
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I love the swap meet idea for decorations! I never would have thought of that! We always make the kids donate before Christmas, too!!
Skye, so glad you listened to that tug. Appreciate your heart for helping others.