A New And Organized Way To Share Thanksgiving

You can still have a Thanksgiving meal and enjoy it with a lot less stress if you organize a meal exchange among a few households.

How does a Thanksgiving meal exchange work?

Who decides what is on the menu?

Get on the phone and decide with your friends who want to play along, what the menu will be.

After deciding on a menu together, you can add all of your recipe links to a shared spreadsheet. Google Sheets works great and everyone can add in their favorite items. It is also a great place for anyone to add allergies or food restrictions.

How do you divide and deliver the food?

Each household can sign up for a dish or two to make in bulk and then divvy them up into equal portions. Divide into inexpensive plastic containers and you won’t have to worry about returning them to each other after the fact.

Once all meals are made, each person delivers them to the other households Thanksgiving morning. Voila! Now you have a huge meal with a lot less effort and if you have friends like mine, a lot of amazing international variations on the theme! Also, if you have elderly friends who cannot or won’t make food, make sure to include them on the drop off list so they can also enjoy the feast!

How can you share the meal when you can’t be at the same table?

Zoom together

One option for sharing is that at the agreed upon time for the meal, everyone gets on a Zoom call and eats together. This works especially well if you can put the Zoom up on your large television so you will not have to be hunkered around a small monitor and can eat and chat with ease.

Share a virtual dessert

Another option is to agree to meet online after everyone is comatose and to share a cordial or dessert together.

Order out

If you’ve decided to go it alone, give yourself a break and order side dishes or the entire meal from a local restaurant. They can definitely use the business. If you feel like making your favorite side dish, it is a nice way to help local eateries by ordering something from them to be delivered to you.

If you are hosting at home instead, these simple tips to reduce stress at Thanksgiving dinner will help.

How can you help neighbors in need at Thanksgiving?

Check your Nextdoor app

If you want to do something to help others (which helps your morale by the way) and don’t know where to begin, reach out on your local Nextdoor app and see who might need food. If you are not yet a member of Nextdoor, check it out and sign up for free.

Nextdoor is an amazing neighborhood forum where you can find all sorts of items from people who have found missing pets to others who are asking about local resources for services.

I have all of my clients sign up (it is free) so that they can find trustworthy service providers in their local area. One year my local Nextdoor helped one of our neighbors in need by providing gifts to put under the tree (and the tree itself!) for a family who had lost all of their income. There are all sorts of opportunities that arise on Nextdoor and you will be able to easily reach out, communicate and help your local neighbors.

Donate your money to the right place

An easy way to donate money to the right place is to check out The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund, which has raised millions of dollars for charitable organizations since it began in 1912.

Donate your time

You can also donate your time by checking in on elderly neighbors and offering to run their errands.

So get creative: do something different, perhaps do nothing at all and cater it all in! You have a perfect excuse to simply sit back and relax. Whatever you decide works best for you and yours, it is all good! And if the season ahead feels full, a little preparation can bring peace to your holidays.