Every year, Christmas brings the same presents, the same dinner and the same cards. What changes is how late we leave it. We put everything off until December, try to squeeze three months of jobs into three weeks, and then wonder why everyone’s snapping at each other.

October is the sweet spot – as nothing is urgent yet, but it’s close enough that you can picture what the day will actually look like.

A few hours of planning and organising this month turns December into a checklist rather than a festive crisis.

As a mum-of-three, and founder of The Organised Mum, with an app supporting thousands of people in their homes and 500,000 followers on Instagram, I’ve been running Christmas in a busy family home for 20 years.

I started my Organised Christmas plan on Instagram, and October is the month where a bit of effort goes furthest. It’s early enough that nothing is urgent, and late enough that you can actually picture what the day will look like.

Here’s what I’d do this month…

Use last year as your starting point

Before you buy anything, work out what Christmas is going to involve this year. Who’s coming? Where are you going? Are you hosting?

If you did Christmas last year, you already have useful data. What worked? What did you buy far too much of? What did you leave too late, and what caused the most stress? If last year’s jar of cranberry sauce is still sitting unopened in the cupboard, you probably don’t need three this time.

Then book the things that get pricier or harder to find later: Santa visits, pantomime tickets, trains if you’re travelling and babysitters for the work do. And yes, Advent calendars. The popular beauty and Lego ones sell out surprisingly early.

Clear the clutter before more comes in

Christmas means a lot of new stuff arriving in a house that’s usually full already, so make some space first.

This is the month for a clear-out of the children’s toys and clothes. Split everything into sell, donate and bin, and list the sell pile straight away. There’s no point creating a neat corner of things you’ve been meaning to put on Vinted for two years! Autumn is a good time to sell toys, games and children’s clothes because other parents are starting their Christmas shopping too.

Put whatever you make straight into your Christmas pot. Your clutter could genuinely pay for some of the presents.

Eat down the freezer

Do the same in the kitchen. Go through the freezer and the cupboards and be ruthless with anything that’s been lurking at the back.

Build what you find into your meal plans for the next few weeks. Your normal food shop gets cheaper and you free up room for the Christmas food and anything you want to cook ahead. Put some of the money you’ve saved towards Christmas.

Set the budget before you start shopping

This is when Christmas gets real. Start with what you can afford, not with what you’d like Christmas to look like. Count the paydays between now and Christmas and work backwards.

Include everything. Presents and food are obvious, but travel, parties, school events, cards, postage, wrapping paper and batteries all add up. Then list everyone you’re buying for and give each person a spending limit.

Writing it all down helps more than you’d think. For a lot of us the hardest part of Christmas is carrying the whole thing around in our heads, and it tends to surface at 2am.

October is also the right time to talk to family about Secret Santa, children-only presents or spending caps. There’s no shame in suggesting a £20 limit. One thoughtful present beats a pile of panic-bought plastic tat, and January is hard enough without a financial hangover.

Shop your loft first

Before buying another bauble, get the decorations down and check what you’ve got. Test the lights now. Discovering half a string has died on the day you put the tree up drains the festive spirit remarkably quickly.

If you want a new colour scheme or need to replace something, write it down. Then you can watch for offers rather than throwing impulse buys into your trolley in November.

Do a favour for ‘Future You’

There are some dull little jobs ‘Future You’ will be very grateful for. If you’re hosting, count the chairs, plates, glasses and cutlery. Borrow or hire extras rather than buying things you’ll store for the rest of the year.

You don’t need to own a dozen matching dining chairs because a dozen people are coming for lunch once.

Stock up on batteries and spare lightbulbs. Check the medicine cabinet. And find a sensible hiding place for presents before they start arriving (then tell another grown-up in the house where it is).

Start buying, and wrap as you go

By the end of October you can start buying presents properly. Get the children to write their lists and prioritise anything likely to sell out.

Then bring in my favourite Christmas rule: wrap as you go. When a present arrives, wrap it, label it and put it away. Don’t let the spare room turn into an unwrapped mountain that has to be tackled late on 23 December.

And once someone’s present is sorted, stop shopping for them. You don’t need to add a few extra bits because their pile looks a bit lonely.

Watch out for the Christmas Itch

There’s something I call the Shrinking Present Pile Effect. You’ve spent weeks buying presents and you’re perfectly happy with them. Then you wrap them all in the same paper, put them together and suddenly think: is that it?

Nothing has disappeared. Once everything is wrapped, all those individual gifts become a stack of similar-looking boxes, and the pile somehow looks smaller. That’s when the Christmas Itch kicks in and we start buying extras we don’t need.

Don’t fall for it. Go back to your list. If you’ve bought what you planned to buy, you have enough.

The biggest luxury at Christmas is getting to December with fewer things left to think about, and October is when you start giving yourself that.

Gemma Bray, aka The Organised Mum, is the UK’s leading authority on the emotional side of running a home, a Sunday Times-bestselling author, and founder of The Organised Method app.