Christmas is Offically Over
January 18, 2010
I have finally taken down my Christmas decorations. Notice I did not say put away my Christmas decorations. They are all currently residing in bins and boxes in the room that should be the dining room.
Except that: 1) I do not have dining room furniture. 2) The room has very light colored carpeting so there is no way in hell that anyone is eating in there. And 3) The room is incredibly small.
So I have taken to calling it that room. You know the room over there in the front of the house. The empty room for crying out loud. It depends on the situation which moniker I use. Everyone just pretends they have no idea what I am talking about anyway so it doesn’t really matter.
Right now I am calling it the room where Christmas threw up.
I have also told people I love not to let me buy another Christmas decoration. Should I attempt to purchase any holiday themed item next year they should pick me up and carry me out of the store. In fact if I pick up one sparkling bauble and utter the phrase, “I need this…” they should just shoot me.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Christmas threw up! I love it!
January 18th, 2010 at 1:26 amYou are not alone…I do the same exact thing every single year. I do not need another thing Christmas and yet I am drawn to all things Christmas when the time comes..So, they can just shoot me as well. Just sayin’!!!
January 18th, 2010 at 1:36 amI enjoy your writing so much — I hope you have a book in the works.
January 18th, 2010 at 1:41 amFor shame! We took our decorations down on Twelfth Night, the 6th, just as we should.
They’re now in a stack of boxes in the garage, in between where the cars go, waiting to be lifted up into the roof. The stack of boxes is beautifully arranged from big up to little in a tapering pyramid, strangely tree-shaped. I wonder how long it will stay there?
January 18th, 2010 at 1:48 amWe just finished taking down our Christmas decorations that were inside our house yesterday. Finally. I know how you feel. It was tough to get it all down and put away. Thank goodness you’ve got an extra room to keep everything until you (or the boys) have the strength to get it put away.
January 18th, 2010 at 2:08 amWe call that the “stupid room”. Because it’s stupid to have a little room at the front of the house like an old-fashioned parlor in the 21st century. Also, I couldn’t agree more about the Christmas decorations! I still have them piled in the dining room and have forbidden my mother-in-law from buying us one more Christmas-related item.
January 18th, 2010 at 7:48 amPerhaps you will remember and you won’t even go near buying them again, but others in the house might just pressure you to get some next year too
January 18th, 2010 at 8:14 amWe have a room like that. After living in the house 5 years, we just gave it a purpose. We put my huge U shaped work desk and one small desk in there and 5 computers. So now it’s the living room
Unforch, it’s also where the thermostat is located so the rest of our house has gotten very cool, but that saves $, so we’re okay with it for now.
January 18th, 2010 at 8:45 amOur friends use “that room” as their office & PC room. And laundry-that-needs-to-be-folded room. And cast-off-coats room. And . .
guess that was no help.
January 18th, 2010 at 9:44 amIf I have the decorations and the lights off the great big dead balsam tree in the living room, will people think I’m just kind of early for celebrating Arbor Day?
January 18th, 2010 at 9:59 amI feel the same way. I did not buy one thing after Christmas. I don’t need one more Christmas ornament or another decorating item.
January 18th, 2010 at 10:41 amOh Man isn’t that the truth……I have so much Christmas stuff I only unpack about 1/4 of it use in decorating.
But of course it is all in bins and I have to rummage through it all to see what I want to use……
Ha maybe we could just pass our stuff to each other and think it was new and not buy anymore crap.
My sister puts up 4 Christmas trees! Yeah talk about needing to get rid of Christmas “throw up”!
Its a new year…….let’s get rid of all this STUFF!
January 18th, 2010 at 1:00 pmWe just turned our dining room into a playroom. We spent many thousands of dollars having the moldy walls ripped out and new hardwood put down only to cover it with foam flooring from Sam’s club. This was what we did this weekend when we took down our Christmas tree (finally).
January 18th, 2010 at 1:12 pmChristmas is residing in 3 big boxes in our short narrow hallway waiting to be lugged back up to the attic. they hopefully will be out of said hallway soon but in years past the record has been aprilish. I hope that we do not break any records in that area.
If they haul you out so you can’t buy any more items please have camera in hand that would be a great photo.
Happy New Year
January 18th, 2010 at 1:15 pmIt’s your office!
That’s what I call our spare room where the assorted crud lands. Though I do keep it 95% off-limits to my offspring, so it’s mostly my own crud.
January 18th, 2010 at 1:20 pmWe all know that no one really uses their formal dining room anyway. Your plan is much better.
January 18th, 2010 at 2:17 pm…where Christmas threw up….
hahahahaha
January 18th, 2010 at 2:54 pmOur dining room is “that room,” too. And we just packed away the Christmas tree yesterday and dammit if there STILL aren’t about 6 small boxes that need to go in the attic.
Frakkin’ Christmas and its decorations.
January 18th, 2010 at 3:46 pmMy living room sounds a lot like your room where Christmas threw up. We had a “real” tree so needed to get it out last week - my couch is still artfully decorated with all the tree ornaments and the end tables covered with all the other decorations. My 12 year-old even suggested that perhaps we should invite some company over because “Mom, you’d never it leave it looking like this if company was coming!”
January 18th, 2010 at 4:06 pmWe have a weird room like that too; we ended up using it for an office. Why do they put those funny sitting rooms/ tiny dining rooms in modern houses? People don’t live like that these days.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:11 pmThis dj on the radio station I listen to occasionally was talking about how he finally figured out this whole ‘cleaning up after Christmas’ thing. He has a new house and he realized if he just attached wheels to the bottom of his fake tree, he can just open the door to the storage closet under the stairs and wheel it right in. *Still decorated.* Next year, he just has to open the door and wheel it out. I am torn between thinking he’s a genius and wondering where to find that kind of storage!
January 18th, 2010 at 5:09 pmI too have taken down the decorations, but not fully put them away. I have one remaining tote sitting in the living room. It seems in the weeks after Christmas loose ornaments start appearing under couches, in cupboards, in kids’ rooms, etc. I’ve decided to keep the bin accessible for throwing the strays in. Uncharacteristically the kids haven’t opened it.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:15 pmWe live in an old house (built in the late 40s, just like me) so we aren’t cursed with one of those “extra” rooms, although I’d love the space, myself.
But here’s something I can offer to you younger mothers regarding all the Christmas (and other holiday) decorations you accumulate over the years: You’ll be glad you’ve done that when each of your children in turn goes off to live on their own, and you give them a few things to start their own collections.
Every kid has some favorite things that they loved for you to bring out each year, and it’s nice to give some of those things to them because that way you are happy to give them those memories and you don’t feel like they’re “gone”. At the same time, you are clearing out space in your own home for getting new things when the grandchildren come.
This I know. It’s wonderful.
January 18th, 2010 at 6:55 pmMy sister calls hers “the weird room.”
January 18th, 2010 at 9:41 pmWe have “that room”. Meant to be a dining room in the front of the house but we use it as a study. Except I can’t call it the study because we have a study upstairs that we never use because it houses all the boxes of electronics my husband never unpacked. (We moved here 2.5 years ago.) So now we call the room…”the front room”.
January 18th, 2010 at 10:48 pmone question - what did you do with the jar of the “inedible” Christmas candies - did you empty it or did you put it in with the rest of the xmas vomit?
Chris says: I threw them all away, except for a small ziploc bag of them that I gave my neighbor. She was over my house when I was cleaning and was horrified that I was throwing them away.
January 19th, 2010 at 2:04 pmYeah, wouldn’t it make a great office for you? You know for that book we’re all waiting patiently for?
January 19th, 2010 at 6:51 pmAt least yours is all in one room! Mine is everywhere. Every year I saw I will organize this stuff and make it neater. But, again there is a little bit in every closet, drawer, and cabinet. I just found your blog and am loving reading it! I will definitely be following and catching up regularly!
January 20th, 2010 at 2:47 pmDitto!!! From the dining room (hahahahahahaha) to the taking down of the Christmas stuff to the do not let me buy any more Christmas stuff. I’m with ya, sistah!
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:12 pm