I never expected that the smallest room in the house would take so much time, work... and emotion...*sigh*.... Amongst the many things I was dreading in cleaning up the utility/laundry room is Christmas.
Christmas decorations and ornaments, that is. I've got boxes of them, piled up above the basement stair cover in the utility room, and a few sitting on the top stairs to the basement, never actually carried down to store last Christmas.
Like many people, I have a difficult time throwing out faded, worn, and even broken Christmas decorations because every one of them has some sort of sentimental memory involved with it. But I live alone, my 5-foot tall plastic Christmas tree is WAY overloaded, and I don't need 20 square feet of space being taken up by stuff I use only once a year, regardless of how much it may mean to me. Heck, half the time, I only get about 1/3rd of all my stuff actually out and about each year!
So I tackled culling the Christmas stuff by dividing it all into three piles: "Broken and can't be fixed," "In good shape but not sentimentally attached," and "I'm so attached I want to be buried with this." In other words, trash, sell at the next yard sale, or keep. The goal was to get all the tree lighting and ornaments into one big plastic box, and all the other decorations into another box, culling a total of eleven loosely and badly packed, unorganized boxes into only two boxes. A tall order, indeed.
Like much of my house, some of the stuff I have is just plain ridiculous. Why do I have SIX unopened boxes of tinsel, when I *never* use tinsel? I own dogs, they love to eat the stuff, you know the result of that if you are a dog owner!! On the other hand, just looking at the tinsel brought up hysterical memories of Daisy, the dog I grew up with, running around the house with tinsel hanging out of her you-know-where... we kids got such a kick out of that, when we weren't completely grossed out! Thankfully, tinsel isn't made out of poisonous lead anymore...
Onward I traveled through Christmas Memory Lane... boxes of little one-inch round glass ornaments I bought with my first tree in my first apartment when I was 18...all of them, the color coating has fallen off of, most of them, the metal hanger loops have rusted or broken... I've not actually used them in a decade, easily, why do I keep them? Sentimental...but they are trash. Time to make room for new stuff, right?
A sprig of dried, authentic, Misletoe. HAHAHAHahahahahahaha!!!!!! ROFL!!! I've not been kissed in what, two years!?! Right, I'm going to keep THAT - NOT!!
A large amount of static window cling decorations, never used because, well, to use them, requires I clean the windows! Who wants to do that in the cold of December? Oh wait... they cling to the INSIDE of the window...drat, that excuse won't work anymore... I'll keep them. Besides, they don't take much space.
Another item, another rush of memories... A silver, Jade and Onyx pinky ring, handmade by a young Navajo I dated briefly back when I lived in Mesa Verde some 15, 16 years ago...shamefully, I cannot remember his name, but he meant so much to me at the time... the ring is here because I made a ornament out of it some years ago, when the silver became worn so thin it was nearly broken through. I'll keep this.
What the heck was his name?
Miles, literally, miles upon miles of plastic beads, used to decorate the bushes in front of the house I rented in Tallahassee around 1985... some converted to door beads a few years ago, but otherwise never used since... tons of purple garland, now faded pink, purchased in 1989 and used to decorate the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of my studio apartment in Washington, DC...
Quick break to chase Binky around the house, he got a hold of some loose tinsel! Retrieved before consumption, fortunately :)
Continuing on through the boxes... ornaments engraved with my name and the year purchases by my Mom as I grew up, the paper-mache stocking ornament I made together with other travelers far from home, strangers become temporary family spending Christmas together sharing our favorite holiday recipes in a youth hostel in Melbourne, Australia back in 1991...hand-carved wood ornaments made by a roommate in San Franciso... pewter ornaments made by a close friend now long out of touch in Hawaii... it continues on as I examine each item and pile them gut-wrenchingly into the keep, trash or sell pile, as appropriate.
Ahh, I remember now! His name was Eric! I wonder whatever happened to him...
Eventually, right around 3 a.m., I reach my goal of combining and repacking all my sloppily packed Christmas treasures into just two boxes, and in fact, I have some room to spare. I move the sell pile to the front porch, adding it to the ever-growing pile awaiting the next yard sale... my neighbors wonder if my porch will ever be empty again! Each precious treasure is actually packed far more securely than it was before, well padded, awaiting unpacking again in a just a few short months to be displayed proudly like each Christmas before.
The only question remains whether these delicate treasures will be next be unpacked in the house I now live, or a new home, a new home for a new dream, the dream of owning my own home, completely debt-free.
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