Remember my goal to start Christmas preparations early? Every year, I vow to start Christmas prep in November, Then Thanksgiving comes and goes, and suddenly it’s December and I’m behind once again. WHY does this keep happening?
Well, guess what. I gave this a lot of thought and was able to identify the problem! I have seven large bins of Christmas stuff. At one point they were organized into categories, and the bins were carefully labeled. Well…
Somehow, over the years, the bins became chaotic. Taking down Christmas is such an unpleasant chore, I ended up just throwing things into bins haphazardly. That led to a BIG PROBLEM. If I wanted to bake cookies in November to put away in the freezer, I had to root through seven bins to find the cookie cutters. If I wanted to send the Christmas cards I bought last January, I would have to, again, root through every bin to find them. If I wanted to wash the holiday bedding… well, you get the idea.
Today, I put away the Halloween decorations and then I tackled the Christmas bins. At first I thought “I’ll just do one” but that didn’t make any sense. If I wanted to organize them by category, I had to do all seven at once. Let’s just look at one of them…
A hand towel, a shirt, green aluminum foil, pajamas, lights, peppermint spoons, a random ornament, a pillowcase… and that’s just the top layer. No wonder I can never find anything! Soon my living room looked like this:
Somewhere around this time, I felt like I didn’t want to do this anymore. Ha! There was no choice but to power through, and I’m pleased to say that the bins are now fully organized- all the bathroom things are in one bin (is it weird that I have a category of “Christmas bathroom?”) the kitchen things in another, etc. The things I know I’ll be needing first, i.e. in the next few weeks, are at the top of the top bin.
There’s still one “miscellaneous” bin, which I’m not thrilled about. But I’ve vowed that anything from that bin that doesn’t get used this year, I will get rid of. In other words, this is our last chance to do that 500 piece Christmas cat puzzle- otherwise it’s out of here.
The only Christmas thing I kept out was this:
Do you do anything to get ready for Christmas in November?
Do you decorate your bathrooms for Christmas?
Top photo by freestocks on Unsplash
