Yes, dear reader, you’re reading that headline correctly – 80 boxes!
And these boxes aren’t all the same relative size, but that number also doesn’t include wreath or garland storage bags either.
Now, you might be wondering how we’ve reached such a ridiculous number of boxes in various sizes and I’d have to tell you that I’m honestly not sure.
I mean, my mom has been collecting Christmas ornaments and decorations for roughly four decades.
So, if I’m mostly pinning anything at fault here then it’s on her.
After all, she started the annual tradition of each child picking out an ornament for the Christmas tree and was more indulgent when it came to holiday décor than most parents were.
How many parents decide to put up an entirely separate 7 1/2-foot tree for their kids to decorate anyway?
I know it’s more common among my peers nowadays, but in the early 2000s, it was definitely not a widely practiced holiday tradition.
But, overall, I can also admit that I am guilty of having my eye caught by a variety of things shiny, cute, and otherwise marketed towards my Millennial nostalgic needs.
Nothing is more evident of that than the amount of Nightmare Before Christmas ornaments I have – some just for my Halloween tree because they’re creepier and the rest that are decidedly more in keeping with the standard Christmas spirit.
Those are often joined by Hello Kitty and Barbie ornaments, along with a random assortment of other pop culture references that vary year-by-year.
Well, this year was the first year we decided to deviate from the longstanding “Candyland” tree theme we’ve had for the past 10 years.
My sister Ashlee and I want to let the gingerbread men and faux candy assortment have a rest for another year.
Instead, we’re covering the designated kitchen tree with all of our childhood ornaments and an assortment of colored iridescent balls.
Well, in order to find all of those ornaments, we had to get every box of decorations out of the attic and perform a bit of re-organization in our storage system.
We used the same process as when we went through the Halloween decorations in October.
The rationale was that if we haven’t used it or seen it in almost a decade then it could be better served at someone else’s house.
With the exception of a few memory-specific items of course!
On top of that, we’ve had to convert the breakfast bar into a field doctor’s tent to fix broken decorations.
Naturally, the ones broken beyond repair were given a proper send-off to the dump.
We’re also breaking down the massive ornament ball collections by color so that we don’t have to bring down more than a handful of boxes next year based on the themes we choose.
Or, at least that’s the overall goal – along with downsizing a bit!
The hardest part is prying mom’s hands off her hanging bead
strands, a beloved snowman candy cane hanger, or some hideous vintage ceramic mice ornaments she holds near and dear to her heart.
She’s far more attached to a lot of those items than we are by far and we’ve argued over a few as the reorganization has worn on.
But, in the end, it’s all about making mom happy and I hope by the time we’re done we haven’t driven her crazy to the point where she tells Santa to put us on the “Naughty List.”
