Customer Reviews

Simplify Your Holidays: A Christmas Planner to Use Year after Year

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

For a young, independent professional I look forward to the holidays as a chance to reconnect with my family and get into the holiday spirit. It's hard because I don't have a lot of time or resources, and Marcia does a great job of connecting me with what really matters. Her Six Sections (Plan, Gifts, Cards & Decoration, Events, December 1-25, and Food) help simplify my life in the midst of the typical chaos we all feel around the holiday season. I encourage everyone to pick up a copy today!

"Simplify your Holidays" is a big, red, loose-leaf book filled with an impressive amount of helpful information and organizational tools to help women cross over from stressed to blessed this holiday season. It's well-structured, and put together in such a way that it can be used year after year. I would especially recommend "Simplify your Holidays" to busy moms, or for those women who do quite a bit of entertaining over the holiday season.

The holidays usually are here before I know it. I am not a good time manager. This planner is great. The schedules are completely do-able. It gives you plenty of time to get everything done. A little here and a little there and before you know it you're ready to enjoy the holiday. It also has great master lists that you can copy and use every year.

Once again Marcia Ramsland delivers a great plan for meeting the goal ~ to enjoy the holidays with less stress and more peace. Her insights provide clear focus with a choice of roadmaps for navigating the extra activities and busy social calendar of the season. I applaud her ability to capture the details of the big picture and present them in simple steps to be accomplished in manageable time frames. Surprisingly, pages don't read like a "to do" list, rather as though Marcia is a good friend sitting nearby giving gently guidance. Also, love the related TIPS from numerous contributing authors.

With all of the commercialism of Christmas, it's easy to lose sight of what is important - Christ's birth and relationships! This book provides the tools to "Simplify your Holidays" to focus on the TRUE reason for the season!

Everyone desires a peaceful Christmas and Simplify Your Holidays enables us to have a well-planned, meaningful holiday season. Marcia Ramsland, the Organizing Pro, helps us realize that "the holidays are as much a matter of organization as they are a matter of the heart"-- and succeed at both. I love the colorful notebook that I can pull off my bookshelf yearly with my gift list, address list, holiday recipes, pictures, journal, and notes all in one place. It is a treasure for a heart warming Christmas!

For years, Marcia has been encouraging and equipping women to simplify their lives. In seminars, in magazine articles, for over 30 years she has diligently shared her wisdom, honed from her own life experience as a busy mom, leader and organizer. This new book is powerpacked with proven tools so helpful to the busy woman. Thanks Marcia for taking all those years of hard work and wisdom and putting together in one place a way to maximize the holidays for true enjoyment of family and faith. applause.

I found the calendar to be the most helpful part of the book. I bought this as a gift for my mother in law who get extremely stressed at Christmas as she tries to do so much for so many. Although I don't know yet if she will use it, I wrote down some tips and goals for the timelines given in the calendar so I can use it. Hope it works! Here's to a stress-less Christmas.

I bought this holiday planner because I was hosting my very first Christmas for my family. I'm someone who often bites off more than I can chew and then doesn't accomplish much.

As for the looks, it's bigger than I expected. Not a paperback or small book size, but actually a large 3-ring notebook. It has space for you to add in all your gift lists, recipes, address lists, etc. It's visually appealing, well-constructed, and the 3-ring binder system should allow me to keep important Christmas documents, like card address lists from previous years.

Will this planner make you more organized? Yes.

But you'll need to follow it's instructions. You'll get more done at the holidays with somewhat less stress. However, it's basic advice is to start early. It has a phenomenal section that lays out all you need to do for the holidays on a week-by-week plan. This is really the highlight and adjusts based on when you start your Christmas chores, 8 weeks, 4 weeks, 2 weeks, or 10 days before the holiday.

I was on the four week plan and certainly got lots of tasks done with less stress at Christmas than ever before. However, I still felt rushed on gift shopping and the final baking of the holiday meal because I didn't plan that one out at all. I'll try the 8 week plan next year and get my Christmas shopping done much earlier.

It does offer tips to make the season easier, although these were limited or not very useful. Decorating and party tips don't make the job easier but might spur creativity.

Beware there's a large section that retells the Christmas story with an effort to keep your mind on the true meaning of the season while you fuss over whether you mailed your holiday packages by Dec. 5th or not. If you're religious, you'll likely enjoy this section. Although unnecessary/unrelated to the main purpose of organization, it is tasteful and well done. If you're non-religious it's easy enough to ignore.

Considering that this book's topic is a holiday with religious origins, I can't fault the author for including it and I feel like it enhances the books usefulness for some, while not detracting from it for others.

However, it's a good holiday planner that I will use next year too.

This a very good book for planning for the holidays. It can be used year after year to ease the stress of the season. I would recommend it for anyone who feels overwhelmed by all the shopping, planning, cooking, etc.Simplify Your Holidays: A Christmas Planner to Use Year after Year