Make the Most of Christmas Isolation
The end to this abysmal year draws near at last! The usual stops to visit family and gatherings crammed elbow to elbow around a table devouring feasts and trying to beat grandma at cards, are all out the window. This year many of us are going to be home for the holidays, unable to count on the antics of a crazy uncle to pass the time. Unless you have planned yourself a monastic couple weeks of silence and isolation you may want to prepare for this fortuitously different Christmas season.
This year you won’t need to worry about tidying your house just to fill it with people and start over the next week. Most interactions this year will be virtual or through a window, but that doesn’t mean you're off the hook for cleaning entirely. Firstly, you will want to establish your cam corner where you will be broadcasting a narrow slice of your Christmas to all your loving family. Make this portion of your house disgustingly Christmassy with garland, lights, and your best Christmas throw pillows and blankets. Make it look like a party! Your family doesn’t need to know it’s the only tidy corner in the house this year and will be delighted by your holiday spirit!
The second area visible to others this year that you may want to tackle before Christmas is your entryway. For any friends that might wish to drop gifts or baking off and say hi though the window or door, you can fool them too! Sweep, dust, declutter, and clean your windows to make room for the fresh, loving face prints. It might even be a good time to give your front door its mid winter cleaning and light some candles so everything you can see from the doorway looks and smells amazing. This years Christmas cleaning theme is, out of sight, out of mind. There is no rush to beat the holidays with your cleaning schedule so just focus on what might be seen.
Amazing local candles
This year’s holiday activities will be much easier to organize as you only need to plan your household’s fun. You may even choose to use your tidy Christmas corner to throw a virtual party. This is easy to do and you won’t have to share your treats with anyone! Send out the invites to your party people and relax, don’t worry about a thing. After some libations you may even muster the gumption for some caroling. Not the horrible trudge through the snow between slips and falls kind of caroling of years past though, this year is the perfect year to do it from home. Get your voices warmed with karaoke and Christmas cocktails, then start going through your contacts spreading joy to all those that answer the video call. If they don’t answer you can assume they have opted out of cloths for the holiday season and keep going.
Speaking of cocktails, you will want to clear a shelf in your fridge for all the holiday supplies you may need. Remember, you won’t need to fill the fridge to the brim or start running platters of food to a second fridge this year. So, make space, give it a quick wipe while its clear and fill it with your boxes of wine, cases of beer or bottles of special eggnog. Be well stocked before the holidays so you can make the most of not going anywhere. If all else fails and supplies run low faster than expected there are lots of great local businesses making Christmas cocktails ready for pick-up for those of you who prefer a skilled bartender to craft those drinks. If you do it right it will be a new year before you know it.
Bo's Bar &Grill - Occum's Razon - Taco Loft
With drinks chilling and nothing but time to spare, it’s opportunity to do some bake to leave for your neighbors. Be warned that they will likely reciprocate the gift of treats and you will have to eat even more Christmas goodies. If your no baker or are just hiding this year, start gathering pillows and blankets. Don’t bring them to the laundry room, because you will need them when you start constructing the greatest Christmas fort of all time! You don’t need to fit extra people in your living room so let the fort sprawl from wall to wall. Use any extra Christmas lights for interior lighting and get ready for a movie marathon. If you’re going to hide out for your annual Christmas Die Hard marathon - don’t forget to dust and give your TV a quick wipe, as it may be the center of your families festivities this year.
By this point you should have cocktails, treats, a blanket fort, and movies picked. The only thing left to worry about is your holiday outfit. I would recommend pajamas but if you need to look good for the virtual party or window visits, I suppose an ugly Christmas sweater and pajama bottoms are allowed. Wake up, shower and brush teeth and get into 
your comfiest set of warm jammies because you have no place to be and might as well enjoy it. There is no pressure to make anyone else happy, so the major concern should be snack and cocktail levels.
All this holiday excitement can leave you feeling like you should move your body, or perhaps it’s all the treats. If the virtual dance party hasn’t wore you out, you could always leave your house for a walk around the neighborhood to say hi to everyone and spread the joy. If you can manage to get the spirits going early you can often accumulate a slew of extra activity while you traverse your house looking for things you can’t recall the location of. Whatever your method, don’t forget to keep active while you indulge in all those treats.
With a head full of fun holiday ideas to busy yourself over Christmas you can worry about the clean up AFTER Christmas. Laundry will be top priority once you have worn all your pajamas and covered all your bedding in crumbs and cocktail spillage but save that for next week. Relax and make the best of the holiday stuck home. But before you hunker down, make sure to check your Christmas list twice, and if you’re not done shopping yet, shop local for goodness sake!