Skip to content

Taking down the Christmas tree

  • by

“I want to take down the Christmas tree” the wife says.

What she means is “I want you to take down the Christmas tree. I’ll supervise.”

My wife loves Christmas. She has six trees, all artificial. She keeps them up all year long. She has more ornaments than any one tree needs, let alone six.

The tree she wants taken down is the main tree, the big one. The one she picks out a different theme for every year and decorates accordingly. At least all the ornaments have been removed in a previous work session.

I start by taking all the lights off. There are lots of strands and they are intertwined with each other. It makes for an interesting exercise in patience, but ultimately the tree is stripped of it’s lights.

Then comes the debranching. I start taking the branches off.

“They have to be grouped by size. There’s a little sticker on each one to tell which one is which size,” the wife says.

I make sure the branches are grouped by size as I take them off and pile them on the floor.

“They need to be taken outside and washed.”

“Fine,” I sigh. I take each grouping downstairs (did I mention the tree is on the second floor of the house?) into the yard and hose them down, then leave them there to dry in the warm afternoon sun.

The first grouping is almost dried by the time I get the last group down. I flick the last few drops off and load the branches in the plastic tub I used to carry them down. I get them all back in the tub and carry them inside. Now all I have to do is figure out where I’m putting them, as they are not going back on the tree.

My wife’s solution is put them in a big box. I get the biggest moving box we have, but it will only take two layers of branches. If we had the box the tree originally came in this wouldn’t be a problem, but alas, my wife repurposed the box and it is now holding something else. Probably ornaments.

I haul all the other layers of branches into the house, one at a time, and end up dumping them in the bath tub in the spare bathroom.

What we’ll do with all the pieces of the tree, whether we sell it or haul it to the next house, is a matter for another day.

If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *