Saturday, January 5, 2008

My Idea of Hell on Earth?

Taking down Christmas decorations, even though I went and spent a small fortune at The Container Store (oh, I heart The Container Store) buying organizational tools for putting away Christmas decorations. What I learned today:

1. Those nifty tree boxes? Made for skinny trees that are under five or six years old. (no judging here - I went to "permanent trees" about 10 years ago when I was a road warrior. If I didn't get a tree up Thanksgiving weekend, there wasn't going to be a tree). My tree is 15 years old and as much as I hate it, it looks better than anything I've seen. Problem is, it doesn't fold up to the size of a postage stamp the way the new ones do, so now I have my tree sitting in an open box.

2. I suddenly got very old and creaky somewhere between Thanksgiving and New Years. I had no problem running up and down the steps to put the damn stuff up, but now have a host of aches and pains carrying the stuff back down to the basement. All of this activity is standard operating procedure - I should be a size 2. It wore me out so much that I crashed on the couch at 8PM and am now wide awake (hence the blogging at midnight).

3. Teenagers, even if you bribe them, are slower than dirt. I didn't know it was possible to make taking ornaments off of a tree a day long event. Even when I explained to her that her hourly rate would be dipping well below minimum wage, her speed remained somewhere in the vicinity of reverse.

4. Stopping to organize your pantry - using all of those wonderful containers you just had to buy at TCS is a sign of middle-aged ADD. Stopping again to make lasagna in between basement runs is another sign.

5. A glass of chilled chardonnay when you finally sit down never tasted so good - even if the effect is the same as applying a hammer to the side of your head ;-)

3 comments:

Kim said...

Bah, humbug, I finally have to suck it up and get everything back to storage today.

I usually put the ornaments back in their boxes, but the newer ones all come in plastic and don't seem to be reusable. I missed out on the ornament boxes at Target, so now I'm thinking tissue paper and plastic tubs are going to have to do it.

Cindy said...

I've finally got almost everything boxed up and put away. I got some of those ornament boxes at Target last year--they make it so much easier!

So now a glass of chardonnay for me, right? Mmmm.

jillskict said...

I am still trying to get the boy to put my bins away. I do have about 30 people coming for brunch Sunday, guess I better bump this up on the list.