The annual post-Christmas clean up

Oh, how I dread the 6^th of January.

 

Formally known as the Feast of the Epiphany or Women’s Little Christmas - a day where women get to spend time with other women - this time of the year has become our annual post-Christmas clean up. Well, rather my post-Christmas clean-up. 

 

Yes, everyone’s around to put up the festive decorations but they seem to vanish when it’s time for them to come down. The other half conveniently has a “business trip”.

 

So rather than sipping on wine, indulging in cheese and crackers and bingeing on Netflix ('cause I get to that all the time....), I’ll be unravelling lights (the absolute worst), squishing decorations back into their boxes, and risking life and limb as I try to get the angel off the top of the tree.

 

Everything will also likely have grown ten times their normal size, and will absolutely refuse to go back into the same container they originally came out of. So I’ll end up spending a good portion of the evening looking for something to store them in. I never should have thrown out those shoes boxes!

 

And while I do this, my darling daughter will reminisce over each and every decoration, play with the tiny reindeer and generally try her best to “help” in her own little way. But too many hands definitely spoil the broth – or in my case, my sanity.

 

And when all is done and I have finally squashed the last baublé into some form of container, I’ll make a cup of tea, look at my clutter-free living room, and then push the boxes aside for another day.

 

There is no way I'm going to try to get them back into the wardrobe tonight. It’s like playing Tetris, and I was never very good at that game. 

 

Mary Byrne is a staff writer at MummyPages and is mum to a horse-crazy, sports-mad, seven-year-old girl.

 

image via Pinterest