Travel Tuesday

We're heading out again on Wednesday. This time, back to the beach. Stephanie and Nicky are going to join us on Friday. We'll be celebrating her birthday on Saturday. 

I'm looking forward to my next organization project while I'm there. But, before I can look forward to just lazing at the beach--meaning, I always feel like I'm on vacation when we're down there--I have to accomplish something at home. Usually something big. 

This week, it was re-organizing the Christmas closet. In all honesty, it doesn't look that much different. It's always been pretty neat.

The Christmas closet was a huge selling point when we bought this house 27 years ago. Before we moved here, we had the pull-down attic stairs--and were glad of it. Now we know how convenient it is to have this nice big, walk-in closet. There's still a lot of hauling involved, but we can take it in stages.

I really should call it the Holiday closet. I have every sort of decoration in here. 

There are assorted wreaths on the walls. Everything on these shelves is Halloween--except for that lone vegetable platter. I haven't used it in years. It might be time to let it go. But, considering I got rid of a lot of stuff last year, I have the room to hang on to it for awhile.

More wreaths.

The top shelf here holds all the fall decor. The middle shelf is Easter. The Christmas boxes on the bottom are assorted wrapping paper and bows.

I'm happy to have the closet all re-organized again--just in time for Christmas!

While I was working on the closet, I had Butch take the 4 huge tubs of Christmas ornaments downstairs. It took me about 2 hours to go through each one and sort them all in to separate bins: give away, keepsakes to keep, and ornaments in use. That pretty much covered them all. There was one container and a box full of ornaments to get rid of. When Sandy was here last week, I had her go through them.

She took 16 of them. And here I always preach that our kids don't want our stuff! There's not really any sentimental value to these other than they are pretty. 

I gave Sandy and Stephanie their childhood ornaments years ago. I still have quite a few of Mindy's. I had planned to give them to her, but she doesn't have room on her tree, nor the space to store them. So, I'll be hanging on to them for her.

I plan to let the girls go through the boxes during the holidays. After it's over, whatever is left will go straight to Goodwill--along with the old Christmas garland in the attic. We switched to lighted, decorated wreaths during Covid Christmas 2020. Much easier. 

I want to have all the Christmas decorating done by the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I have book club here on that Monday night after. Since we're going to the club for Thanksgiving, I was able to put the fall decor away. Now I can just focus on Christmas. I've gotten to where it's just so much work. As I'm putting it up, I'm dreading having to take it down. At least Butch and I have agreed that we are going to do away with the live tree and just have our beautiful flocked tree. We only had that tree up last year and I loved it!

This is last year. It's going to look pretty much the same I'm sure. 

When do you decorate? Do you still go all out or are you planning to cut back?