De-Christmasing the House

When I had had just about enough of editing on Sunday afternoon, Christopher and I decided that it was time to de-Christmas the house. We've been known to leave the decorations up longer in the past (after all, if your Holiday party is in January, you can't take the tree down until then, right?), but last weekend it just seemed like it was time.

It's strange how much faster things come down than they go up. I hauled the boxes out of the basement, and Christopher and I set about the living room pulling things off the tree and off the walls. We packed up all of the Christmas cards which had taken over the top of the buffet. We took down the lights. We boxed up ornaments. We wrapped up the houses from under the tree and around the room.

Mostly, even I had to admit that it was good for it all to come down. Except...

Just a week or so before we put up the tree, we had finally decided that the massive houseplant which Christopher had had in the corner of the living room needed to go away. It had been around for years, but was no longer thriving -- at least in part due to the fact that it was too tall to get any natural light on its leaves. It had started to list farther and farther to the side, and... well... it was time for it to go.

We dealt with the now-blank wall at the end of the living room pretty well for a few days, then put up the Christmas tree. The tree actually took up a lot less space in the corner than the plant had filled. So we kind of looked at it as weaning ourselves off from the plant.

But now we're back to nothing in that corner but the corner. It's weird. And, somehow, it really makes me want spring.