How many many holiday decorations do you need?

It’s almost time to hurt your back again by ferreting out your holiday boxes filled with all that good cheer and...stuff. This year, why not be super-duper selective in what you keep and what you donate? The time to donate is now so others can use your items this year because nobody wants Christmas tree ornaments after the holidays. Well, not nobody but definitely not as many people who want them for the holidays. 

So go haul those boxes out right now, before the crazy begins. Paring down decorations will get you started on the road to eliminating the madness that runs rampant in December which is, you know, supposed to be the hap-happiest time of the year. Happy, I’m saying. Not stressful and dread-filled. 

Spread everything out and separate into categories: outdoor, tree, mantle, lights, whatever. Step back and look it over. Are there things that you don’t even like? Things that fill you with dread just looking at them? Move the dread items to one side. Don't overthink this. Trust your first reaction. You’re not getting rid of anything yet, just rethinking the damn things. If you want to simplify and declutter your life, you start by eliminating the items and traditions that bring you no joy, or that you do just because you’ve always done it, or because what will the neighbors/kids/friends think. 

Does hanging up outside lights make you crazy? Then stop using them! If you still want some sort of outward-facing holiday cheer to remind the neighbors that it is in fact the holidays, simplify it. Put a (or several) lighted things in your window(s), no ladder or staple gun required.

Next, pull out the items that just fill and swell your little holiday heart with crazy holiday cheer, and move them to the other side. Don’t include the things that you feel obligated to cherish. Either it has huge pleasant meaning to you, or it doesn’t. Be ruthless. 

Here’s my Christmas lesson: As the kids grew older they had zero interest in decorating the tree, even if we had cookies and eggnog and Christmas music playing. I too was sick of ornaments, both putting them up and taking them down and packing them oh so carefully away again. So after the first year of decorating the tree all by my lonesome, I stopped doing it. I put lights on the tree because I love little colored lights at Christmas. Guess what? The tree looked beautiful and not a single person cared that there were no ornaments. Stop doing things that don’t bring you joy. Stop caring about what others think. Stop doing things simply because you’ve always done them. Simplify and declutter your life to leave you time and space to breathe and think and enjoy life instead of racing right through it. 

So now you have three piles: the dread/don’t-like pile, the brings-immense-joy pile, and the ambivalent pile. Pack away all the dread items in one box, and the ambivalent stuff in another box and put them somewhere not too difficult to get to but out of sight. Don’t even think about them. Look at the items left and decide if you’re happy with those decorations. If you’re not putting up outside decorations this year but want some lighted object in your windows, go get it.

When it’s time to decorate, use only the joy items. If, after putting those items up, you feel morose and downhearted because something’s missing, wait it out. If you still want that item back after one week, go get it out of the box and put it up. If after one week you’re enjoying the simplicity and white space and peace all around you, not to mention all the time you save not blowing up those eight tiny reindeer and Santa’s sleigh for the front yard — then take those boxes to Goodwill or wherever.

But wait! Oh no! What about the kids’ ornaments? The ones grandma gave them each year (10 of them now if you have a 10-year-old) and the ones you bought every year to commemorate something in their lives that year (another 10). And what about the ornaments from your spouse’s childhood (18+) and the ones from yours (18+). And the ones you bought when you were first married and the ones you bought over the years. Who on earth started this circus and how long will it go on? Because here’s what happens: when the kids move out, they get their box of ornaments. Then when you die, they get your own ornaments collected over the years as well as your childhood ones, as well as any of your parents’ ornaments that were passed down to you. That’s a mighty lot of ornaments. What this should mean is that after two or three generations, people don’t need to buy ornaments anymore.

​And yet .

My suggestion to young parents: rethink the ornament a year or you will be overrun with ornaments by the time the kids grow up. I doubt my millennial kids will ever have the big decorated trees we did. They’re a simpler, pared-down generation. If you absolutely have to do the ornament each year thing, let it be just one. Fight with grandma if you have to, or let her be the ornament giver. Now that I’m at the other end of life (the early other end) I can tell you that we have quite the collection of ornaments and I’m pretty sure the kids won’t want/use half of them. 

Can't lie. I myself couldn’t get rid of the danged things. So after going through the ornaments one last time to weed out the broken or crappy ones, I packed the rest away in marked boxes for the boys to snag when Bob and I topple over into our graves. I don’t bring those boxes out at Christmas, and I rarely ever see them as they are packed away in our storage room. Meaning they don’t clutter up my mind at all and yet offer me the assurance that I am not ripping the kids’ holiday joy and memories out from under them. Plus, let the boys deal with the danged things. 

For those with young kids, slow down on the holiday decorations. Ask anyone over 50 and they’ll tell you: most of it is just stuff you’ll get rid of later. Save yourself while you can!

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