Recovering from Chaos

The time between Thanksgiving and New Year is total chaos. Everyone tries to fit in a "special" holiday version of meetings, there are lunches, brunches, cocktail hours and dinners to attend. At church there are special services, choir for the kids, the pageant and decorating. And those are just the things outside the house. Inside we are hauling the decorations out of the garage, hanging the lights and making sure that the prized holiday decorations are on display for their maximum exposure before they head back into their 11 month hiding spots. Its always a little sad to put the decorations away and say goodbye to the holiday season but having a method to the madness helps.

In our current house we are blessed with the Christmas corner of the garage. There is a little cubby space just wide enough for the boxes of Christmas paraphernalia and the tree right inside the garage door. The previous owners even made a base so things that get stacked there are off the floor. After spending much time wrapping the lights onto the branches from the trunk out to the tips I was loathe to take the tree apart. my dear husband managed a set-up that would allow us to box up the tree with the lights on and store it away for the summer. Things like that are just one of the many things that make me love him. Also in our streamlining frenzy last year I threw out extraneous stuff, reduced the total number of boxes and carefully labelled those we kept. It made getting it out and putting it back to rest much easier for this year. I actually had most of the work done in the matter of an hour--even with the help of the children!

On the outside front Gman is a big fan of the heavy duty winders for extension cords to wind up the light tubes and some of the other lights. Next year we need to do a lighting overhaul and make sure that everything is working or gets thrown out and gets put away with labels.

So my chaos-recovery strategy--eliminate, label and relax!

Still not packed up from your holiday chaos? Check out other posts at the Parent Bloggers site to see advice from other experts. The folks at SC Johnson might have some products to help you out as well. Their http://rightathome.com site can help you find solutions.