If you have problems with clutter; with bursting shelves and drawers; with attics, under stair cupboards and that useful space (that was) on top of the wardrobe where the Christmas decoration boxes now are, then clearing down Christmas could be your real ticket to a less cluttered New Year.
You’ll have received presents you can’t use and you don’t want, but feel guilty about getting rid of them, so you’re likely to shove them into the monster cupboard – the place for all displaced items. You’ll have been sent cards from people you absolutely mean to get in touch with this year – much like the past few years – so you squeeze them into a drawer with every intention of making this the year that you actually do. Alongside the ones from last year and the year before.
You’ll be looking at tired wilted decorations which in turn will make you feel too tired and wilted to do anything with them other than putting them back in the box for another year. You’ll be undressing the Christmas Tree and smiling at the memory of the cat disappearing up it and partly breaking some of your most treasured baubles – that you then return to the box as you can’t bear to throw away the memories attached to them. That dodgy string of lights that sometimes works can go back in its box to be fixed next year. The scruffy tinsel that sheds everywhere – even as far as inside the washing machine.
All in all, un-doing Christmas and hurtling headlong into the New Year seems like any other chore – pack it up and put it away and start again.Â
But here’s the thing. There’s an opportunity being missed here. If you clear out whilst you’re clearing down, you’re onto a winner. You can regain lost space in the drawers; the monster cupboard; the attic; the under stair cupboard and on top of the wardrobe. You can start your Year anew Cinderella. Chuck out the wilted and broken, the dodgy and the dangerous – recycling where appropriate of course – and enjoy the prospect of tidy and sorted Christmas storage, contained in a couple of boxes in one place rather than bursting out of several, randomly sprawled around.
Failing that, work with someone who’ll tell you straight; what should stay and what should go – even if we’re well past January and heading for Easter. Twinkly lights aren’t just for Christmas so let’s make sure all the bulbs are working!
