Clearing Christmas

I am making progress with the worst part of Christmas--putting things back for the year and clearing the rubble.

The tree must stay up until after New Year's Day, since it has only been up for a week, but the last of the gift wrappings and cardboard box recyclings have been removed from the house and the crumbs and debris are vacuumed. I missed the recycle truck on Wednesday and my garage is still full, so it might take a month before I clear all the cardboard and paper.

I had only one overnight guest and all the extra bedding is washed. Just this afternoon I finished ironing (yes, I actually press them) my white cotton and linen dinner napkins and folded away the last of the tablecloths. Most of the wine glasses used are put back into basement storage.

 I am working on finishing the leftover Bailey's Irish Cream and ChocoVine which someone purchased...

As the days of Christmas rolled on, we became progressively more casual and never did haul out the Noritake china. The Arby's glasses, however, were put to full use. One was broken in the chaos of gift-opening night--we won't say who was the clumsy one! Here is the collection, all 28:

 By the third night, the theme was whimsical, with a paper runner from a leftover roll of Christmas wrap, complementing the leftovers of chicken-broccoli, gourmet macaroni and cheese and spiral ham.

By the fifth night our energy level had devolved to such a low point that we settled for chain-restaurant pizza, on paper plates. We were all weary with the menu-planning and dish-washing (me) and "formal" dining.

As I sift through the rubble of Christmas I have been slightly sad. We were all together here, for the first time in quite awhile. We watched those old family movies with nostalgia. They included more footage than we remembered, even very cute movies of our third child as a baby and a talking two year old--movies that none of us really remembered, since we had had no way to play the old beta tapes, which have now been reformatted.

In some ways those days seemed more simple and happy--although the girls said that I looked tired all the time--thinner and younger, but exhausted by three young children.

The nativity with the wise men and some wreaths will stay up until epiphany, but I have put most of Christmas away. My last act of cleanup today was to remove Marissa's art work from my dining room window. On an impulse last week, I retrieved a can of snow from a basement shelf and emptied it on the window. It was old and smelled a little funky, even after it dried. Today I took a photo and washed the window. Christmas is over.