Domestic Pride

When packing up my Christmas decorations, I had a "I'm as good at packing boxes as my mom is!" moment. It's similar to the feeling I get when Philip says, "Where are my sunglasses (that you've never touched)/screwdriver/extra deodorant?" and I know where it is somehow. I'm definitely growing up! Although not in every way, I'm still not the best cleaner.

Anyway, time to wrap up the Christmas posts, in talking about the packing up of Christmas decor around here. 

In preparation for take-down, Philip and I went to Superstore and purchased two Rubbermaid bins. I had hoped for red or green bins for easy identification, but they cost more and I figured I could just as easily make cute labels so I went for blue. Also we don't have as many decorations as we might some day - we only needed to buy two bins for now - and this makes it easier to buy more bins that match later on. I figure, if we want we can always buy green bins in the future if we see them on sale or something and use the blue bins for something else. You can never have too many Rubbermaid bins (that's what I tell myself anyways). 

So I got to work taking down decorations. I started with ornaments, putting them into some old ornament boxes that I had inherited, since the ornaments in them weren't as fragile and special to me, and then I put those ornaments just carefully in a box. Luckily there's nothing too heavy in my Christmas decor collection, so I feel like everything should be safe till next year (unless I get my hands on it - I definitely broke 2 ornaments in about 10 minutes while taking down my tree). I was pretty tempted to introduce the red solo cup/cardboard ornament holding contraption into my box, but I wasn't sure if all my ornaments would even fit in cups and then I'd have some odd men out, plus I just didn't get around to it - did anyone else do that? Would you recommend it? Anyone want to try it with me next year?

So genius. Okay, putting this picture into the post sold me on this idea for next year, definitely going to give it a go. (someone remind me next year?)

I put my recent 1 am purchase star in its original box, as well as the white Ikea trees. Some other things like homemade pine cones just got put in a big freezer sized ziploc. I also put my homemade-from-old-Christmas-cards gift tags in a ziplock and tucked them safely inside. Some other odds and ends got added too: Christmas lights, Philip's new pancake pan, some cookie tins, and our stocking hangers (except we don't have stockings at our house...so they just hang nothing). 

Once it was all packed in - and like I mentioned above - I did a better job packing these boxes than I ever have in my history (is anyone else a bad packer?) - you can see my history here if you don't believe me - I stowed it all in the basement in a place I thought was safe. Until we gutted our bathroom...it is now covered in bathroom plaster dust, but that's a story for another day.

All of our Christmas gear hanging out under the stairs. It says "do not stack" because I'm nervous about if another heavy box was put on top some ornaments might squish. 

When Philip got home we took down the tree after some struggle of figuring out if we could get it downstairs and keep it together so we wouldn't have to put lights on it again next year. We failed at that attempt, so the lights came off and down it went in three pieces.