E for effort

Telling a two-year-old that the mini Christmas tree that was in his room for a month is now being put away until next Christmas isn't easy.

OK, telling him is easy, but enduring the fallout from telling him isn't.

Last weekend, JP I and tackled putting away our holiday decorations. I told him if he would just bring our plastic storage totes down from the attic, I'd put it all away -- the trees (the main big one and the two little ones), the lights, the ornaments, the stockings, the snow globes, the manger scenes, the nesting wooden Santa dolls, the doorknob hangers, the wreath, the pine jingle bells decoration. The everything. (OK -- believe it or not, that wasn't everything. There were a lot of decorations we never put out.)

JP took pity and me and took down the big tree by himself.

And he helped me put the rest of the decorations in the storage totes. They've gone up in the attic until next Christmas, much to Fly's confusion.

It's a new year, and it feels good to pack up and put away. (Like going through my stash of baby things and deciding to turn them into a giveaway that ends tomorrow. Or cleaning out the spare room for my baby and finding 53 framed pictures for the walls, 6 empty frames, two mirrors and a corkboard. Clearly, JP and I have wall art issues. But that's for another post.)

But, wait! Darn, I forgot all the snow globes are still sitting on my dresser. And I found two little ornaments of Fly's tree in his room buried under all the new Christmas presents he got from family.

So our holiday pack-up system isn't perfect.

My guess is those snow globes will sit on my dresser until at least March.

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The Parent Bloggers Network and Right@Home are asking how bloggers clean up after the holidays. Because Right@Home is full of homecare articles about cleaning and other things, maybe they will at least give me an E for effort.