UNITED STATES—It is that time America, the holidays are over and it’s time to start getting back to a bit of normalcy. What does that mean? Those Christmas decorations, ornaments and all that allure has got to come down and it is time to start putting things away. I don’t know why this unfolds every single year, but it truly puts a beating on me mentally.

Why? The thought of just having to take down decorations and put them away is such a chore that I find exhausting at times. You’re going to be doing a lot and I mean a lot of back and forth. So what does this mean? You have to go get the storage items from the basement, you have to start to take things down, you have to place them in bags. Now I will admit placing things into the storage bags or contains is not that difficult, it is the constant back and forth that will be tiring on your body.

My biggest gripe is the decorations on the tree. Why? They all have to be taken down, one-by-one and then they have to be stored properly. Why? You don’t want those ornaments that are specially made or have sentimental value to be destroyed. The goal was to start taking down the Xmas decorations this past weekend, but I didn’t have the energy to do it after a week of just watching a bit more football than I expected after work.

I said, this coming weekend, I WILL tackle the decorations because you can’t have the Christmas tree and decorum up come February, can you? I guess you actually can, but it would just look weird if I did actually do it, so I don’t plan on letting things linger as long as I did in 2024. Yeah, I don’t think I took everything down until February last year. To be honest sometimes, having that decorum up brings a levity and lightness to life that is quite fun and exciting.

I will admit once you have all the ornaments OFF the tree and into the appropriate containers and storage containers, taking the tree down is easy especially if you have a fake tree. I used to do a real tree, but stopped because you have to constantly water the tree, and the pine used to irritate my skin to the high heavens. It got so bad one year that my entire arm was brutally red and itched like hell. That was a sign to me that nope, no longer doing that.

Let’s just do a fake tree because you can easily break it down and store it away for the following year. The home tends to have a LOT more Xmas décor which is my biggest gripe. So everything I put away before Christmas, I have to pull those things back out and remind myself where they actually go. I wish my memory was much sharper, but it’s not, so I sometimes have to have mental pictures of things before the Christmas attire was placed out.

The biggest problem is that I have very little helping taking things down. Last year, I did it all solo and it took me about four hours to do it. That was just putting away the decorations, that is not me having to clean afterwards. Storing the items is one thing, but cleaning afterwards is another whammy that can be exhausting on the body. However, Christmas is one day, and for many Americans we keep the decorations up for around 4-6 weeks and then reality hits you: time to get back to normalcy.

Yeah, we always want Christmas to last 24/7, but that would be super expensive, and I don’t think many Americans want to have that level of stress on their wallet.