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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
S/O holiday decor- where do you draw the line?
I am in the middle of pulling out our bins of holiday decor and I am very gently culling out stuff- right now just random non-functional decor items that I don't love, but I am really tempted to part with a lot more.
I feel like I have a lot of small sets of holiday stuff- like 4 wine glasses, 4 red napkin holders and matching coasters, etc. Lots of little things that add up to a lot of stuff to store. I am trying to be more ruthless with my purging, but it's hard when they are "nice" things and not crappy- KWIM?
I guess I could try to consign them and that might make me feel better about it.
How do you handle the annual influx of holiday stuff in your house?
Re: S/O holiday decor- where do you draw the line?
Oh my gosh, we have SO MUCH holiday crap up in our attic. It used to be neatly packed into four Rubbermaid tubs, now the stuff is everywhere. Every year I say I'm going to organize it all when I put it away, but when that time comes, I just want to get the house back to normal so it never happens. Maybe this year. Yeah right, with two under two, I don't see that happening.
I was walking around Target yesterday (alone!!) waiting for my RXs to be filled and was getting very tempted to buy more Christmas items, but I overheard a very wise mother telling her tween daughter no to buying very adorable Christmas dishes (next to the Christmas towels, next to the Christmas welcome mats, next to the Christmas throw blankets, etc.) and the mom agreed that they were very cute, but said "you have to store those the other 364 days of the year." And, it was like a lightbulb for me.
I really do love Christmas decor, but I hate when houses are end to end decorated for Christmas. But, I hate over decorating in general. I also don't like decorating to feel like some big chore either. I don't know how to weed it or control it totally, but I just don't wnat to consume/buy things that are used for such short period. I also hate when people give me random small decor items - b/c seriously, what am I going to do w/ ONE candle? Most of our decorating is either in our living/family room/fireplace area where we put our tree and then we have garland on the stairs and lights in the windows. I would like to start putting a little bit of decoration in our rooms - maybe a wreath on our door and DD's . .. but I'm not there yet.
BFP#1: 01/10, M/C 6w -- BFP#2: 06/10, M/C 5w -- BFP#3: 09/10, DS born June 1, 2011
BFP#4: 07/12, M/C 5w3d -- BFP#5: 12/12, EDD 08/18/13
Decorate This
I purge yearly.. especially if I receive little trinket gifts that I don't end up using. Luckily for me, my mom owns an antique and consignment shop so I can get rid of nice stuff that's just NMS and not feel bad because my trash becomes someone else's treasure and I might even make a couple $'s.
I have also decorated minimally for the past few years because I have either just moved in, just gotten married, been in grad school, had a small house... you can tell I find Christmas decorating to be a chore. Now that we are the newbies in a closeknit neighborhood, I will at least put up white lights and greenery out front, but I also have never spent Christmas in my own home... we still stay at my parents house. The one time I hosted my girlfriends over for a potluck, I put out more stuff and I definitely confine the decorations to two main rooms, I think I will get really into it once we have children.
My parents house is ridiculous... they have over 20 years worth of decorations and my mom physically cannot throw things away. I do like seeing the old paper ornaments I made in pre-school, etc. but the decorations are throughout the entire house... that set-up and clean-up is definitely a chore. But it makes more sense to me since my parents host over 50 people on Christmas Eve and people ate literally in every room of the house.
I love it!! there is no line!! the more the merrier!
I'm kidding....kind of. I really do love most of it so I try to find places for it (we rotate our dishtowels, for example, since I have about a dozen holiday dish towels haha.) We'll use holiday wine glasses - if we only had 4, we would use them just for the two of us or when there were 4 of us for something.
If it's something I really don't like and never use - not just a matter of "this is too much stuff" then I do give it away but I'm not at that point yet really.
my mom has Christmas Spode china that she uses for Christmas day only - and its silly IMO. If she used it all season long, that seems more practical. My SIL switches out basically everything in her kitchen - dish towels, napkins, placemats, china, glasses, flower pots even - just for Christmas.
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DE IVF #1= 04/11 - BFP
Once Aiden was mobile (2 Christmas's ago) I drastically cut down on the clutter. I freecycled a bunch of decor and threw even more away. DH's family has a propensity for buying us Christmas towels/dishes/soap dispensers every year. There's only so much of that stuff you can have cluttering your house up.
I got rid of even more this year and it felt sooo good!
miscarriage on 11/26/09 at 5w6d