Maybe next year!
Okay, you just got your tree over Thanksgiving and now it’s time to deck the halls, the house, the tree and the yard. You climb up to that space over the rafters in the garage where the holiday decorations are stored. Maybe your decorations are in an attic storage, along with other seasonal decorations, suitcases, boxes of trophies and other school memorabilia from your kids, that broken touch lamp you knocked over last year and didn’t want to throw away…you get the idea.
The decorations are brought out and everyone is ready to go. Then, the real fun begins. You reach into the bag of lights and pull out what looks like a very large coiled monster ready to engulf you. It’s made up of numerous of those 100 mini-light strings tangled together. The rhetorical question, “who put these lights away last year?’ is greeted by a deafening silence.
Meanwhile, in another corner, eager kids are digging through a large bag with sparkling garland all twisted together and shedding as they try to untangle the strands. Glass Christmas balls roll across the floor from a shaky cardboard box.
After a month of holiday activities and entertaining, many of us just want to put away decorations and get ready for the new year. I promised myself I would organize my holiday decorations last summer. Well, it did not happen, especially since the attic storage closet is about 100° in July!
While at lunch last fall, I heard a woman at the next table discussing how she had finally organized all her seasonal decorations last year, about two months before Christmas. She said she brought all the Christmas decorations into her living room. Evenings, while watching TV or chatting with her husband, she would sort them and put them into marked boxes she had prepared earlier. She said she was really motivated to do it right before the holidays. She also followed through with clearing out decorations she had not used for years but could not let go of. All her children’s handmade decorations were put in a special “Christmas memories box.”
Well it is never too late to make a change. There are all types of holiday storage boxes available now, even molded ones for Christmas balls. I bought some last year, with the best of intentions, but never followed through. The holiday season is here, but you can pick any month to make organizing your holiday decorations a project. Invite you children, husband, friends, whoever stops by, to pitch in. Everything goes faster with many hands. Having project months might help with other tasks we tend to put off, such as organizing the sewing cabinet! I think a monthly project might be a good New Year’s resolution for me. Maybe it will work for you as well.
