“Oh goody! Let’s put away all of the Christmas decorations immediately!” SAID NO ONE EVER.

Sad but true. I love Christmas. I love decorating for Christmas. But taking it all down is a real chore. And usually it falls on one person and in my house that’s me.

So….since I pretty much got the flu a couple of days after Christmas, and have been sick since, getting Christmas squared away and back into all of the containers is not happening quickly.

I remember when I was a kid, my parents used to spend weeks pointing fingers as to who was putting what away when. As a result, one year the Christmas tree was still up at Valentine’s Day. And it was a fresh cut tree so by Valentine’s Day it was dry and brittle and a fire hazard waiting for Miss Havisham’s living room (that’s a literary reference to a Charles Dickens’ character in Great Expectations for those unfamiliar.)

I try to be systematic about putting things away and usually all my ornaments and decorations stay up through Epiphany.

Epiphany falls 12 days after Christmas, or January 6th this year. Also known as 12th night it is the end of the Christmas season. Now I could stretch it out to Eastern Orthodox or Russian Christmas but when New Year’s Day rolls around I am generally ready to deconstruct Christmas as all eyes from the Nutcrackers, elves, and Santas seem to stare off their various bookshelves and tables.

As far as storage goes, I have graduated to plastic tubs of various sizes at this point. My parents used to keep all the decorations in giant cardboard boxes, and I did that for years until I realized how much easier it was to be able to see things. Also, because a lot of my ornaments are vintage, I prefer sturdier containers for storage.

Every year I start with good intentions of making everything super organized so I will never forget where anything is. And every Christmas that follows I still can’t remember where everything is!

I have collected a lot of ornaments over the years, so this is the time of year where I also periodically evaluate things that I am not using to free up storage space. This year, the things that are going to go away are the vintage metal ornament trees. They are wonderful for displaying ornaments, but I have ultimately decided I prefer little tabletop feather trees if I am going to display ornaments on smaller trees.

I have found over the years that the easiest way to deconstruct and clean up from Christmas is to do it a little bit at a time. So day by day something else gets put away until it’s all put away.

Before I go I am going to share one last photo. It’s a little VW bug and a Christmas tree Christmas ornament. It is my new favorite ornament and it came from the Christmas open house for Life’s Patina at Willowbrook Farm. Meg buys the best ornaments!

Thanks for stopping by.