"I can't think of anything happier than all these cozy decorations," I declare every year when we put up the Christmas tree and add the layers. Then, as soon as Christmas passes, I'm over it and want calm and clear and bare and quiet.
Packing away all the Christmas love avalanches me into more clearing. This year, I emptied the mantel and it's currently stark naked.
I tackled the crammed bookshelves. Anytime I do something book related; whether it's letter writing, journaling, reading, magazine-ing, purging; the kids always join me in their own flavor of it. Fern was my partner in crime.
I looked through and said goodbye to my beloved Country Home and Cottage Living (bring back CL!) while she made a collage of cute pictures. I'm a recovering book hoarder-ah the days I worked at the book store! Now, I keep good ones to re-read or loan and the others get sold.
After I organized our books, there were several gaps on the shelves, so I had to style them-something I'm never confident doing. Style them is a fancy way of saying "finding stuff for me to put in the holes."
I've trimmed down a lot of my house accessories, so there wasn't much to choose from:
A washing bowl and towel, a gift when you join our church
A vase I bought on a trip with John
Some feathers my mom used to wrap a gift
An egg, my very first painting from an art class I took years ago
Burl's first communion cup
The tinkering was fun and it's already changed since I took these photos.
Now, it's on to more spaces that need some clearing. That's how I'm addressing these cold hard months: by cleaning and calming. I would almost be tempted to use the word quiet-ing, but I have too many children for that.
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