12 Days of Giving 2015: #9

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It’s Monday, there are four more shopping days until Christmas, and if it’s not bought, wrapped and shipped already, it’s probably not getting to where it’s going on time. You have a houseful of people descending in a few days and the house needs to be scrubbed from top to bottom still. Panic setting in?

Give up trying to make things perfect.

Yeah, this is a bit of a revisit to the ‘Give yourself a break’ idea, but really. Think it through. The people who are coming to see you are coming to see you, (and your kids  ) and if the house is clean, but not picture perfect, are they really going to mind? Now be honest–some of us have people coming over who we could scrub for three weeks in prep for their arrival, and these peeps would still find something to complain about, re-organize or clean to a better standard.

:head desk:

So what’s the solution? Try even harder to meet a standard that you can never achieve, or take a look around and make sure your house, your menu and yourself are the way you want them?

I suppose the flip side of this challenge is to make sure our expectations of others are reasonable. Our partners can’t know the perfect gift for us if we don’t tell them. Our families don’t know how to help if we don’t ask. The whole mind-reading thing works great in stories, but not so much in real life!

If there’s one thing that would really make this season special for you, have you told anyone, or made sure you’ve arranged for it to happen? Because that’s a far more achievable perfect than meeting everyone else’s expectations.

Today’s gift to you is a your choice of one of my print books, signed if possible, or any two of my backlist ebooks. Leave a comment telling me the one place you’d go for the holidays if you could (and which book/books you’d pick  if you win.) I’ll give out gifts to two commenters.