Putting Away Ornaments is an Art Form

It's here. The time to remove Christmas from the house. For many reasons January is my least favorite month. Putting away Christmas is way up at the top of the list. It takes forever to get Christmas up in the first place. Mark has many facets to his business and one of them is decorating his client's homes for the holidays. In the past I knew to get him early; right after Thanksgiving, before he started on any of his client's homes. That's not possible any more. He has more than one client that loves having their home decorated and now he starts right after Halloween! That's too early for us. This year we got our tree mid-December but had to wait a week for Mark to be able to put up the lights. I can take it from there ( after decorating so many trees that's the last thing Mark wants to do at home ) but the tree wasn't finished until a few days before Christmas. Now the new year is here and we have projects we'd like to focus on and having the house decorated for the holidays seems to temper our enthusiasm. So, the ritual begins. Understand that we have been together for more than 27 years. That's 27 seasons of collecting ornaments. We have amassed an incredible amount and EVERY piece has meaning or a memory attached to it. We can't simply pack them away. No! They all have their individual boxes. These boxes are labeled with who's ornament it is; where it was purchased, the year it was purchased or if it was a gift, and from whom. Many of them are from particular designers and if they put out a catalog I have photocopied a picture of the ornament to help identify it and taped it in the box lid. I have also saved any original price ticket. There must be about 25 large plastic containers that we keep stored in the attic. I have tried my best to have as accurate a description of the ornament in it's lid for easy identification and it is very interesting how our descriptions vary between the two of us. This has caused duplicate boxes to be created when an ornament has been presumed missing and now, every year it is a major source of irritation. I think I'm being so clever when I write " elf head with blue eyes and green beret". Who knew we have three ornaments that fit that description? I try to describe them so that there's no mistaking them such as "heinous baby" and "antique testicle balls". This has worked well. Yes, they really look like testicles and "heinous baby" is butt ugly. I created what I call the"quandary chair". It's a location where I can put boxes that have yet to be mated with it's proper ornament. Our living room currently looks like the tornado scene from this season's "Desperate Housewives". Surprisingly, it has it's order and I think we're doing better this year than in the past. Now, to improve things further. Doesn't it make sense to have access to the larger ornaments first? It's frustrating to have alot of the tree decorated and then run into a carton of larger ornaments so I decided I need to organize the ornaments by size. S,M,L. Each ornament container is now marked according to the size of the ornament. I bought myself a present this year - containers that hold about 20 balls and have indentations for each individual ball. It's like art! Actually, putting away ornaments is an art form. Anyway, you can see through the lid and see every ornament without even opening it up! Each ornament lays there, unable to roll about or have to be wrapped in tissue. It warms my heart to see such organization. My little ornament family, each in it's cozy little bed. I have plans for next year. This will be the ultimate organizational improvement. I'm going to attach a number to each ornament and write that number in the lid of it's box. We can then lay all the ornaments around the room after we've taken them off the tree. Mark can call the number off the lid and since I will have placed the ornaments in numerical order I can go right to it! What do you think?