As we continue to clean out the house, we came to the one room we’ve been most avoiding. The Christmas Room.
The wife collects Christmas ornaments, wrapping paper, and other related items the way I collect books. That is to say, many and varied.
The wife loves Christmas. It is her favorite time of year. She loves decorating trees. She has seven of them, that stay up year round. Well, up until this year at any rate. She’s taken down six of them (that cleaning out the house thing) and one lone tree remains.
She picks out a theme each year and decorates the main tree accordingly. We had an ‘under the sea’ theme one year, with lots of merpeople ornaments. We had a Mardi Gras theme one year, with tons of purple, green, and gold ornaments. We’ve had trees of every primary color theme.
In order to properly decorate according to theme, the wife goes shopping at Christmas stores, always looking for the right ornament(s) that will fit in perfectly. I think shopping for Christmas is her second favorite thing after decorating trees.
Anyway, the Christmas Room is where she keeps everything during the rest of the year. She has ornaments sorted and boxed according to color, or type of ornament, or color and type of ornament. She has gift bags, and gift tags, and many rolls of wrapping paper. The room is stuffed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling.
We started at the doorway, taking out a box, unpacking it, sorting things into keep / sell / donate piles. She has her sentimental favorites, much like I have favorite authors. Some were easy for her to let go. Overall, she managed to get through her ornaments faster than I sorted my books.
On in to the room we went, box by box. After two hours, we’d made it about a third of the way through the room, then called it a day. We even threw away a whole trash bag worth of used paper, broken ornaments, etc.
We’ll make another run at it sometime soon. The house needs to be cleaned out so there’s no avoiding it. But it’s the last major push for the rooms so after that we’ve just got closets, the bathroom, and the kitchen to do.
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