Your life is stuffed with useful things, and you have run out of places to put everything away.
The new cell phone your brother gave you for Christmas isn't junk, but you save the box it came in, in case you need to refer to it sometime. The sweater you bought on sale at Macy's isn't junk, but you had to take a cardigan off your closet shelf and cram it into your t-shirt drawer in order to make space for the new sweater. The fake poinsettias you bought (see previous post) are lovely, but now you're faced with sorting through previous years' Christmas decor hidden in eight boxes in the garage and weed through them in order to make room for the poinsettias.
Most all of what you have on shelves, in closets, stacked in the garage, piled in the basement are useful things: electronics boxes, sweaters, Christmas decor. But are they useful to you RIGHT NOW?
If all that stuff you have stored away was useful to you, right now, then you would be USING IT right now.
But you're not.
For your own peace of mind, admit that those things aren't being used by you, and let them go to someone who will gladly put them to use right now.
This isn't brain surgery, and you're too overwhelmed with the after-Christmas stuff-glut to read a longer post anyway, so just GET RID OF THE JUNK!
Contact one of the charities below and arrange to have them haul off all that excess you've got stashed away. You will bless others in need, you will gain extra space for what you use on a daily basis, plus, you'll receive a tax-deductible receipt for what you give away!
Goodwill Industries: www.goodwill.org
Salvation Army: www.salvationarmyusa.org
St. Vincent de Paul: www.svdpusa.org
Many blessings to you!
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
HOLIDAY DECOR: REAL OR FAKE
I love "real" Christmas trees. As a child, my family received the most delicately scented pine trees from a retired university professor who lived across the street. The trees he gave us were carefully thinned from his acreage up the mountain. My Dad would cut the bottom few inches off the trunk and wrestle the tree inside, where us kids would descend upon it with strings of colored lights, family decorations, paper chains, and tinsel, carefully separated strand by strand and hung one piece per branch.
As an adult, I continued this tradition of using cut, live Christmas trees. I still recall the winter I was six months pregnant, trudging up a snow-covered mountain with my husband and two sons, ages five and four, looking for the perfect Christmas tree to thin and bring home to decorate. Other years we bought live Douglass fir trees from the Rite Aid a few hundred yards from our back door. I loved the whole idea of our family using a new, live Christmas tree each year.
Until a few years ago when my schedule, budget, location, and good sense overcame nostalgia: I no longer lived across the street from a retired professor with wooded acres to thin nor behind a Rite Aid. The cost of purchasing a tree from a grower's lot every year became an expense I was no longer willing to keep in my budget. And I no longer had the desire to drive an hour to the mountains with a forest service tree tag in hand, hike two miles in the cold and snow, find a suitable tree growing less than three feet from another tree, cut the sucker down, bind the branches close to the trunk, drag it to the car, scratch the paint and my cheek with it as I hoist it onto the roof, lash it down, and bring it home where it needs to be watered and vacuumed around every day like a high-maintenance pup.
I bought an artificial tree.
This tree is easy to put up and easy to store. It looks real. It never drops needles and needs no water. It will still be around long after I am gone; my kids can inherit the thing. I don't need help roping it to the top of my car or shoving it in the trunk. I don't need to saw the bottom few inches off the trunk. I don't need to freeze my boots with a two mile hike up a snowy mountain to chop the sucker down. Nor do I worry that the price at the lot down the street was cheaper than what I paid for it at Rite Aid. And I will never pay another cent of my money for a decoration that will only last one month.
I finally did the same thing with poinsettias: bought fake ones. They look real, they don't need water, I don't need to worry about kids or guests knocking them over and spilling the soil across the carpet, they can't poison my cat, and I will never pay another cent of my money for plants that only look good for one month.
But not everyone feels the same way I do about artificial decorations. Both real and artificial decorations have benefits and drawbacks. Neither is the better choice for everyone. But think about this: one choice may be better for you at this season of your life. If you don't have the storage space for a bulky artificial tree or poinsettias, then a "real" tree and live plants would be the more practical, clutter-free way to go.
You'd be nuts to suggest that I purchase a live tree and poinsettias at this season of my life. My artificial tree is up and decorated, with very little effort or time expended for the SAME EFFECT, with most of the SAME DECORATIONS as I hung on that hiked-for, hand-cut tree all those years ago.
I'm not at the point of wanting a "real" tree. I'm not at the point of willingness to support the idea of high-maintenance decorations.
But 12 years ago I was. And I could return to that point next December. I don't know.
Life's situations change. Our perceptions, goals, dreams, and schedules vary year by year. Our personal energy levels wax and wane. Our health may be robust one year and so-so the next. Our kids' and grandkids' needs change too. Heck, even the addition of a house cat can sway your decorating decisions.
Last year, as usual, I wanted to decorate everything just so, including the gingerbread men cookies. I fussed over the way the lights and garland looked on our artificial tree. I hand-made a dozen ornaments. No way this year. I'm a divorced mom of three. I'm learning to delegate and let go of my need to control where the decorations go. My kids did most of it, and the tree looks pretty good, considering it was decorated by an 11 year-old tom boy and her two autistic teen-age brothers.
Where are YOU at on your life's journey? Are you at the point of adoring the thought of searching out and cutting down your own Christmas tree? Or are you at the point of pulling a fake one out of its box in the garage and calling it good enough?
Whatever your path, be kind to yourself. Honor yourself by acknowledging where you're at in life RIGHT NOW. Allow yourself freedom from guilt over not decorating "good enough." Or allow yourself the freedom from guilt over storing boxes of decorations in the garage that you only use one month per year. Do what you want this year. And decorate because you want to, in the way you want to.
May you be richly blessed this holy season. Merry Christmas!
As an adult, I continued this tradition of using cut, live Christmas trees. I still recall the winter I was six months pregnant, trudging up a snow-covered mountain with my husband and two sons, ages five and four, looking for the perfect Christmas tree to thin and bring home to decorate. Other years we bought live Douglass fir trees from the Rite Aid a few hundred yards from our back door. I loved the whole idea of our family using a new, live Christmas tree each year.
Until a few years ago when my schedule, budget, location, and good sense overcame nostalgia: I no longer lived across the street from a retired professor with wooded acres to thin nor behind a Rite Aid. The cost of purchasing a tree from a grower's lot every year became an expense I was no longer willing to keep in my budget. And I no longer had the desire to drive an hour to the mountains with a forest service tree tag in hand, hike two miles in the cold and snow, find a suitable tree growing less than three feet from another tree, cut the sucker down, bind the branches close to the trunk, drag it to the car, scratch the paint and my cheek with it as I hoist it onto the roof, lash it down, and bring it home where it needs to be watered and vacuumed around every day like a high-maintenance pup.
I bought an artificial tree.
This tree is easy to put up and easy to store. It looks real. It never drops needles and needs no water. It will still be around long after I am gone; my kids can inherit the thing. I don't need help roping it to the top of my car or shoving it in the trunk. I don't need to saw the bottom few inches off the trunk. I don't need to freeze my boots with a two mile hike up a snowy mountain to chop the sucker down. Nor do I worry that the price at the lot down the street was cheaper than what I paid for it at Rite Aid. And I will never pay another cent of my money for a decoration that will only last one month.
I finally did the same thing with poinsettias: bought fake ones. They look real, they don't need water, I don't need to worry about kids or guests knocking them over and spilling the soil across the carpet, they can't poison my cat, and I will never pay another cent of my money for plants that only look good for one month.
But not everyone feels the same way I do about artificial decorations. Both real and artificial decorations have benefits and drawbacks. Neither is the better choice for everyone. But think about this: one choice may be better for you at this season of your life. If you don't have the storage space for a bulky artificial tree or poinsettias, then a "real" tree and live plants would be the more practical, clutter-free way to go.
You'd be nuts to suggest that I purchase a live tree and poinsettias at this season of my life. My artificial tree is up and decorated, with very little effort or time expended for the SAME EFFECT, with most of the SAME DECORATIONS as I hung on that hiked-for, hand-cut tree all those years ago.
I'm not at the point of wanting a "real" tree. I'm not at the point of willingness to support the idea of high-maintenance decorations.
But 12 years ago I was. And I could return to that point next December. I don't know.
Life's situations change. Our perceptions, goals, dreams, and schedules vary year by year. Our personal energy levels wax and wane. Our health may be robust one year and so-so the next. Our kids' and grandkids' needs change too. Heck, even the addition of a house cat can sway your decorating decisions.
Last year, as usual, I wanted to decorate everything just so, including the gingerbread men cookies. I fussed over the way the lights and garland looked on our artificial tree. I hand-made a dozen ornaments. No way this year. I'm a divorced mom of three. I'm learning to delegate and let go of my need to control where the decorations go. My kids did most of it, and the tree looks pretty good, considering it was decorated by an 11 year-old tom boy and her two autistic teen-age brothers.
Where are YOU at on your life's journey? Are you at the point of adoring the thought of searching out and cutting down your own Christmas tree? Or are you at the point of pulling a fake one out of its box in the garage and calling it good enough?
Whatever your path, be kind to yourself. Honor yourself by acknowledging where you're at in life RIGHT NOW. Allow yourself freedom from guilt over not decorating "good enough." Or allow yourself the freedom from guilt over storing boxes of decorations in the garage that you only use one month per year. Do what you want this year. And decorate because you want to, in the way you want to.
May you be richly blessed this holy season. Merry Christmas!
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