Something New, #246

I love Christmas decorations.

This may be a holdover from my first career as a visual merchandiser. Even though we started in September with the Christmas rollout, I never got tired of it.

I have 10 of those Rubbermaid tubs filled with decorations in my basement. This does not include the 4 artificial trees and outside decorations. 3 of those tubs are just ornaments. My mom feeds my habit by getting the girls and I several Hallmark ornaments every year.

I have 121 Hallmark ornaments, 37 of which are just Barbie. (Barbie gets her own tree in our house.) This does not include home made or non-Hallmark ornaments. Those go in another box. 121 Hallmark ornaments that have to be unpacked and packed every year in their original boxes. If I threw out any of the original boxes, I'm sure something really terrible would happen like the earth's axis would tilt, bats would fly out of the sun or my mother would find out.

So this year, I got tired of the tedium of taking out all the ornaments out of the original boxes, then matching back up with the original boxes when the trees came down. I did something really out of my comfort zone.

I didn't store the ornaments in the original boxes. And lived to tell about it.

OK, I KEPT the original boxes, just stored the ornaments in a fancy-schmancy divided storage box (actually two), flattened the original boxes and stored them in another box. Hopefully this will expedite things next year.

And yesterday, I did manage to control myself at Target even though ALL CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS WERE 75% OFF. I only bought one dozen small blown glass ornaments to replace the ones that were broken from the Advent ornament tree.

Again, not a Something New that is earth-shattering, just out of my comfort zone.

Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps.