When do you “un-decorate” for Christmas? Are you a pre-New-Year’s-Day un-decorator, or a post-New-Year’s-Day un-decorator?

At our house, we’ve decided to leave our Christmas decorations in place until December 31st, but on that day we’re going to take down all our Christmas decorations and pack them away, so that we can start the New Year with a clean slate (and a clean house)!

I confess that I’m ambivalent about the whole un-decorating process. I love the festive Christmas decorations, and the house always seems so bare, and well … boring … after Christmas. No more lights on trees, reflecting on the shiny ornaments. No more evergreen garlands dressing up mantels, banisters, and doorways. No more Christmas wreaths welcoming visitors to our doors, or peeking through our windows. It’s a little bit depressing. But this year I’m planning to combat those post-Christmas un-decorating blues with a little perspective called “margins.”

Richard A. Swenson, M.D., has written some books on this concept of margins, which simply means making room in your life for pauses and empty spaces, and not cramming so much into your life that you end up constantly feeling out of time, out of energy, out of space, and out of money.

I’m going to think of my Christmas “un-decorating” as a way of creating “margins” in my home … after all, less glitter and more empty space in a room might just lead to an increased sense of peace and serenity. And that’s a very good thing to have!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Holidays, Interior decorating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.