UNITED STATES—You snap your fingers and next thing you know Thanksgiving is here. It feels like we just celebrated Halloween and in less than a week, the biggest food holiday of the year will be upon us. Yes, I’m referring to Thanksgiving, which can be stressful as hell for many Americans. Why?
The year 2025 feels a bit different than previous years because so many families have been impacted by the economy and inflation. The cost of food is very high; let’s call a spade a spade, and with that knowledge people are cutting a bit back. You’re purchasing the essentials and everything else, if the budget allows it, you purchase it.
I have to agree with that. I helped with Thanksgiving cooking the last 3 years, and for 2025, I just don’t think I want to deal with that headache. Why? It’s a lot of work, much more work than most people realize. Not only do you have to go to the grocery store to shop, you have to plan a menu, and you also have to work around your busy schedule to prep food, a guest look, cook and clean the home if you’re serving as host.
For as long as I can remember I have ALWAYS worked Thanksgiving Day. I think there has ONLY been 1 year in the past 20 plus years, where I did NOT work on Thanksgiving Day. It has always been the norm for me, and it will be the norm in 2025. I have to work, and I do plan to do a small amount of cooking to ensure my mother and father-in-law have a meal and alleviate that stress on her.
The prep has started this week. Why? I did some grocery shopping, but the grocery store didn’t have a lot of the items that I needed. To my surprise, now the store that I shopped has the items I purchased at a much cheaper rate. Ugh. I’m trying to save money America, and every single buck, matters to my pocketbook, it really does. Nothing makes me annoyed when you want to do grocery shopping and every single thing you need or want to purchase, you cannot find or they’re out of stock.
No to mention with some items being more expensive in 2025 than in 2024, you have to decide if that is a dish you want to craft or perhaps leave off the list this year. you can’t always spend more, sometimes you have to cut back because let’s face money has to be reserved for actual emergencies. We just binge a bit more on Thanksgiving than most days.
Take this advice from someone who has worked at a grocery store, you don’t want to visit the store the week of Thanksgiving, especially on the Tuesday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It will be beyond a madhouse; it will be chaos that you cannot even imagine. In addition, you will NOT find what you need, and you will be stressed senseless.
Start prepping those dishes Sunday before Thanksgiving. You might think, of course, I have plenty of time, the reality of the matter is you do NOT. You do not have as much time as you think you do. Every day and every minute counts. The last thing you want to do is place yourself in a pickle where you’re doing so much the day before and the day of Thanksgiving that you don’t get to rest or relax as you had hoped to.
With that said, if you’re hosting, the house has to be cleaned, and you want it to be pristine. Why? You might have family members staying at your home, and you always have that family member that is extra perceptive about what you have done and what you haven’t done to your home. It can indeed be annoying but prevent the chatter or ignore it the best you can, and if you don’t want to deal with the cleaning yourself, you can always hire someone to do it for you.
The worst thing you can do when it comes to the Thanksgiving holiday is procrastinate. It tends to sneak up on you in ways that you never imagined. You wait too late and its Thanksgiving Day and you’re slaving in the kitchen for hours and hours. Why is that bad? By the time dinner gets flowing, you’re exhausted and completely checked out. Where is the fun in that?
