Was Thanksgiving stressfull for your family? When families get together for holidays, someone always gets the short end of the stick. The family hosting the main meal, well let's say the women in the house hosting the main meal, really have a lot of work to do.

This article will give you some ideas on how to plan the holidays so that not all the work load falls on one family or, God forbid, on person in one household. The main thing you need to be ready to handle are as follows; the list of persons who will attend, the menu for meals that will be served, plans for decoration - what - when - who, when shopping will be done for needed supplies, when and whom will cooking be done and finally but certainly not least important when and by whom will clean up be done.

Our family handles these things in a set way which has been tested and tried true over the years. For all major holiday meals we make an assigned list and everyone is responsible for bringing the dish assigned to them. This takes a lot of stress off the hosting household and makes sure we don't have three dishes of sweet potatoes.

Another important thing is to make sure each person makes at least one trial run on their assigned food item that they will bring to the holiday meal. This increases the quality of the meal and avoids embarrassment for anyone. If the trial is done at least two weeks in advance there is plenty of time to work out a replacement dish and do a trial run on that as well.

Set out a seating plan according to who is coming. Every family has some personality clashes so better you assign people to sit where they and everyone else will end up being the most happy.

The matter of cleaning has two parts; the cleaning before guests come and cleaning after the meal. Make sure everyone in the house cleans their portion of the house early before guests arrive and assign duties for post meal clean up to everyone. This will make sure everyone shares in the cleaning responsibilities. For cooking you should advise everyone to use disposable cooking pans. This helps a lot and makes clean up so easy; in fact just toss the pans away.

Some things can be cooked the day ahead, for those things you are responsible to make. Desert dishes are a good example of this. Most deserts can be cooked one or more days before the holiday. Saving all the cooking for the day of the holiday is a mistake.

One thing we always did the day before was to help mother set the table perfectly so that this was one thing she did not have to worry about. This sure saves a lot of panic if it is discovered that some important serving item; dish or utensil is missing. Setting the table at least the day before allows time to correct for those type panic situations.

Follow the tips in this article for a holiday that everyone can enjoy in as much a stress free manner as possible.
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Sun, 2009-11-29 07:49 - Subject:  
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