I finally decided I should take down at least part of the holiday decorations this weekend. I've really been in no hurry for a couple of reasons.
First, the season was so short and I got stuff up so late, I decided to enjoy them longer.
Second, I have changed a lot of my decor to winter greens, pine cones, cardinal, holly berry and ivy kind of stuff, along with gold and white nutcracker/soldiers, things with gold accents, etc. Not so much in your face Ho Ho Ho or traditional Christmas looking stuff, so I'm not tiring of it so quickly as back in the day of a lot of more traditional holiday things.
Third, I put up less this year, and everything was much more defined in it's place, fewer surfaces decorated and I've curated a really cohesive look for each area/floor of the house. Part of my frustration with my holiday decor a number of years ago was that while beloved and beautiful to my eye, it was a collection of things acquired over time that really didn't match/coordinate in any way that pleased me anymore.
And fourth, I put off packing up because it took me a bit longer and more effort to decorate than I anticipated it would (but still a fraction of the time and effort it was just a few years ago), and I just wasn't in the mood to revisit putting it all away and it taking more time than I wanted it to.
Well, I was pleasantly surprised. I broke down the living room and the kitchen, had it packed up, cleaned, and everything put away (stored for the rest of the year) in those two rooms, in the defined spaces I've set aside for holiday decor (an antique trunk in the living room, a storage bench in the front hall closet floor, and one cabinet in the kitchen), all in less than two hours.
Holiday decorating had gotten to the point it was taking several days to accomplish. Totes and boxes hauled up and down steps, tons of packing materials to be put back up or down stairs just to be brought out again six weeks later, struggling to find a place for regular decor to be stashed. It had gotten to be much more than I wanted to do.
Even a couple of years ago, as I started this whole, "store the holiday decor for each room, in that room", with no boxes, and very little wrapping (I lay the things in the storage furniture in layers, heavy at the bottom, layer towels or bubble wrap in between layers, more fragile things at the top), it was still kind of overwhelming. I continued to eliminate holiday decor, become firm in my decisions about certain rooms to no longer decorate at all (the upstairs, where the bedrooms and bathrooms are get no holiday or seasonal decor now), and certain surfaces to no longer decorate even in rooms with decor, and eliminated a lot more things, so the storage areas in each room are not now hard to repack and make things fit quickly and easily.
I just thought I'd share that the purging slowly and calculatingly is beginning to pay off. I am still able to decorate in a manner I enjoy, and have less stuff to handle and store, and dread the process less than I was just a few years ago.
I'm letting go of more holiday decor each year, without doing one great big painful purge, and nearing the results I was hoping for. So I guess for those still fighting the holiday decor decisions, finding the way to store most of the stuff right in the room it is used, and fine tuning the style and number of vignettes has done two things for me. It has stopped my holiday decor buying totally. The closest I come to buying holiday decor the last two years is if it is a lantern of some type they are selling during the seasonal shows, that I can use all year. And it has reduced the physical work and amount of time in getting the stuff up and back down again.
It's made holiday decorating exciting and desirable again.
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