Ah . . . Space

I love having Christmas decorations up, but I'm always so happy to have them come down as well. I think it's the best way to kick off the new year, reclaiming our space.

Every time I walk in the living room I feel like it's so big because  the tree is gone and all it's trappings.

So, in getting all the stuff put away, I wanted to share with you something that Peanut Head and I have been doing since the girls were babies.

I think like many families, Peanut Head grew up with the tradition of receiving a new ornament each year at Christmas, so that when he grew up and moved out he would have a set of ornaments to take with him.

This was a tradition that we knew we wanted to carry on for our kids. Except that because I carry everything just a little bit too far, Zoe ended up with at least a dozen ornaments her first year. Oops.

It became apparent early on that we needed a system to keep track of the kids' ornaments, so we went out and bought a storage container for each of the girls' ornaments.

And you know, I love me an excuse to buy a new container.

The other thing we came up with was this little spreadsheet (love those too, I'm the Queen), to keep track of each ornament, the year it was received, and who the giver was.

These little lists stay in the girls' boxes with their ornaments, and they save us a lot of time when putting the ornaments away. Without them, I don't think we'd remember whose ornament was whose and where they came from.

These are the boxes, all packed up and ready to put away for next year.

Except that we're going to need a bigger box for Zoe. Oops.