The 2 ton grocery bag....

Remember that blip about me tossing aside some Christmas stuff I didnt want to deal with.....I finally did it. I call it the 2 ton grocery bag......the emotional baggage is that heavy. I am a somewhat sentimental person. Its a bag of what not like ornaments that I bought years ago, they remind me of struggle, hardship and my quest to create a "perfect Christmas". That is the truth, that is what I was experiencing at the time I bought them at the thrift store, that is what first comes to mind when I see them and feel them. My heart sinks remembering about how was I going to give my daughter a christmas as a struggling, going to nursing school single mom. Now I "know" I should be grateful of my accomplishments of graduating and making it. I am, I worked my hump off, but I do not need to remind myself of the emotional garbage I was dealing with of that decade.

I have major issues surrounding the holidays and 90% of them are centered around "false expectations" of myself and others. Seriously who needs 100's of ornaments, enough to decorate 5 full size trees anyways.....that is nuts!!

It started when I was a small child, I loved it when dad brought the tree into our living room and when it came time to decorate it, us kids were not allowed to touch it and take part. My mom was an absolute perfectionist and the tinsel had to be perfect, the ornaments evenly spaced and balanced. When it came time for me to have my own tree in my own living room........guess what I did..........the same damn thing my mom did, excet the tinsel. Each year I solidified that negative experience deeper within me every time I decorated a tree, and I did it for almost 15 years.
When that FINALLY (some would think I was a slow learner, no, just stubborn) occured to me, I hated myself for doing it to my own children. What also occured to me is no matter how many trees in my house, no matter how many ornaments I collected it would never replace or fill that hole in my heart of wanting to be part of it all when I was small. It was time to move on and stop reliving that movie in my head. Karen Kingstons ideaology about "collections" and "basements" hit me like a ton of bricks, and that is what it took for me to "get it"..........it felt good to understand the "why", forgive myself and move on. It is one reason the holidays are less stressful. I dont really care what my tree looks like now and my kids do 80% of the hanging of the ornaments. My son hangs all sorts of stuff out of the toybox on the tree. Its so cute.....and get this he whacked one of the antique 50's ornaments off and it shattered, swinging a stick playing Chang off of Mulan, I just guided him in cleaning it up. I did not freak out, 10 years ago I would have had a meltdown. He did feel bad for doing it, and the stick went outside but the important thing was I did not flip over a 10 cent decoration, and pass that on to my son.

Keep working on your de-cluttering, it is truly a process of paring down. Oh and that 2 ton grocery bag.....its gone-dee!!
S.C.