After the rush of the holidays and the race to get everything done, bought, baked, wrapped, given, written and sent, January burn out comes around. All I want to do is sleep. It’s raining. The tree and decorations are still up. The lights are still wrapped around the Italian cypress trees in the front and draped on the bushes—strands and strands of them, which were more fun to wind around in anticipation of how they’d look all lighted up this year.
The “holiday put away,” I call it, is when everything goes back, in bins, labeled and (sigh) I don’t have the energy to do any of it.
How many Christmas ornaments are too many? Last year we bought a gold/bronzey-ish metallic artificial tree and I did it in all gold, silver, and dusty pink Christmas balls. I didn’t have enough of these colors so I bought more. This year, same tree, multicolored though, with lots of over-sized balls, again, I didn’t have enough had to buy more. These, added to my already too many Christmas balls that live in giant stacked bins in the garage off-season, are what we have to walk around every day when we leave the house.
How many mini Christmas trees that one places on, say, a mantle, is too many to own? Last year we did a theme of silver trees. Once again I didn’t have enough and I was back in the stores getting, dang it, more.
Not to mention, here and there, new Christmas ornaments that come out every year that we can’t pass up at 50 percent off, resulting in …more bins and balls. How many bins of Christmas stuff in one’s garage are too many?
Considering we have next to zero storage space at our house, everything ends up in the garage because there is no other place for it. I bought myself a Rubbermaid plastic storage shed last year. It does the work, but it’s nothing spectacular. And what a hoot putting that thing together was. It said on the directions: “installation requires two people.” Humm. I don’t have two people, she said. Turns out one people is plenty. But it wasn’t exactly fun and a little dicey at times.
January Mondays. The toughest Mondays of the year. Just sayin. Maybe a hot bath is in order with Epson salts and some essential oil. Maybe taking a day off—like on a Wednesday (never take a Tuesday off, that week will seem to never end) or wandering around 4th Street in Berkeley, at leisure, with hours on end to burn. Washing the car? Love the clean car thang. Eh, I’ll think of something before I tackle my holiday put away…one day at a time.
Cheers.
—SBM
Single Busy Mommy 