January 04th, 2021

Here we are 4 days into the New Year and I've managed to  put Christmas 2020 completely away.  Yup, it's true.  Yesterday we packed up the lights, the tree and the wreath.  Every ornament, every stocking and every snowman was lovingly, carefully, wrapped and packed.  And then summarily stuffed into every dank, dark, crevasse Tim and I could squeeze out of the utility room.  Tim moved a few things in this direction, I wiggled a few others in that direction, we both consolidated some other things and eventually we managed to find space for it all.  Not certain where it all fit last year, but it's somewhere else this year.

Actually I know exactly what happened.  We bought a second fridge.  I know, I know.  We are super spoiled.  When we lived in Colorado, we did a lot of entertaining and we came to realize fairly quickly that having a second refrigeration was very handy!  So, way back then, we bought a second one and put in our garage.  The garage in Colorado had 3 bays so there was plenty of room for it in that  third bay.  Naturally when we were getting ready to move here to a much smaller house, one of the MANY things that did not move with us was that second fridge.  ( I think we left it in the Colorado house for the new owners)

And why?  Well, first of all, this house, our Florida house, is much smaller so space is at a premium.  And yes, of course, we knew that ahead of time. This Florida house was not about big and fancy. This house was about location.  We wanted to live as close as possible to the ocean and if that meant living in a much smaller space then  we would just find a way to live smaller, make better use of whatever space we had and ruthlessly delete anything unnecessary in our lives.  Secondly, this house has no garage.  I know that sounds crazy (no garage?)  but again, not really necessary.  There is no snow here, no ice here, no freezing and subfreezing weather to worry about.   And, I suppose, we figured that we would just entertain as dictated by available space.  And that all sounded like a terrific idea. It made perfect sense.  We were determined to follow through on all of our down-sizing plans.

And it mostly worked.  Most of the things that we got rid of, we don't miss. But boy oh boy did we miss having that extra fridge.   Room for  Costco sized food purchases. Room for cases of cold water. Room for cookies after cookie baking marathons.  Space for fancy desserts, for cold-cut platters, for giant watermelons, for popsicles, for extra ice.  (while we don't have to worry about snow or ice anymore, we do have to survive  hot, humid summers!)  The extra fridge also means fewer trips to the grocery store and I am always in favour of that!

So we cleared out a space in the utility room (as opposed to a non-existent garage) for the new refrigerator.  When considering where it would go we knew that the second fridge had to be close to the outlet for the cord(of course) and it would be nice if it was fairly close to the kitchen door for speed and efficiency.  Tim and I stood in the utility room debating where the new appliance would go while eagerly awaiting it's delivery.  Hmmmmmm.  The most logical space was the exact spot where all of the Christmas decorations were stacked up in bins and bags and boxes.  Oh well, it was almost time to decorate for the holidays anyway, so we hauled everything Chritmassy into the house. The new fridge fit perfectly, I mean PERFECTLY in that space and all was well with the world.

Until I undecorated.  Hmmmm.  Now we needed to find a new spot for all of this stuff!   Yikes!  Ok this was the time for me to finally fulfill my long-standing promise to myself to sort  through all of the decorations and get rid of anything I wasn't using.   I narrowed my eyes, hardened my heart, cracked my knuckles and began. It took a very long time.  I had to stop and consider every single Christmas related item we have collected for the 27 years we've been married plus all of the crap I already owned and couldn't bear to part with before that. 

In the end, I found that I was able to throw away the broken, ratty looking, falling apart things without mercy or hesitation.   A little harder was  setting aside for donation  other perfectly fine things that had absolutely nothing wrong with them but somehow I just have never used.  Naturally there were a lot of things that I simply could not get rid of.  Too many memories, guys, too many memories.  Still there was a fair amount of success. .And in fact, I was successful enough in my heartless decision making, that we were able to get rid of two bins.  TWO! Ok I just impressed myself.

It's hard sometimes to let things go.  It's a chore and not an easy one. But in the end, I'm really happy that I finally just got down to it and made it happen.  Garbage pick up was this morning so the throw away pile is safely gone.  I only need to stop by Good Will one day soon and all of the rest of it will be forever part of someone else's Christmas memories.

And you know what?  I feels pretty darned good.  Next up will be sorting through books.  And getting rid of them will be even harder!