5 Ways to Wrap Up the Holidays

Now that all the gifts have been opened, the kids are back in school and winter has finally blown in, it’s time to wrap up the holidays. Take the ornaments from the tree, unravel the lights and pluck the strands of tinsel that have electromagnetically attached themselves to every orifice of your living room, and the dog. 

Despite all of those promises made a mere month ago about how this year you would change the fuses on every strand of lights before neatly returning them to their off-season place in the attic, you instead rip everything from the tree in record time and shove it all into any receptacle you can find that’s handy—garbage bags, shoe boxes, empty wine cases.

The dog watches in amazement as you effortlessly knot every last string of lights, ensuring that when you retrieve them next December, off-color words between you and your partner will fly like monkeys from Oz around your family room.

That being said, here are five ways to wrap up the holidays: 

1. “Out with the old and in with the new.” And if that means your significant other, so be it because you can allow no one to get in the way of your mission to return your house to normal. Since the kids are back in school, get rid of all those old toys with missing pieces and replace them with their new loot. Doing this first will not only provide you with a direct route to the tree, but moving piles of things from one room to another will make you feel like you have actually accomplished something of importance.
2. Remember to empty the water from the tree stand before you tip the tree over to drag it outside. Every year a tsunami of water pours across the living room taking out every piece of electronic equipment that the kids have left on the floor--remote controls, Nintendo DS's, my uninsured cell phone.
3. Unlike the Christmas trees on Farmville, your computer’s delete button will not automatically remove yours from your house. Part of the tradition of having a real tree is that when it is dragged to the curb for recycling, shards of needles remain so that you’re still painfully pulling them from the soles of your feet in July.  
4. Take down all those holiday greeting cards with pictures of children (most of whom) you never see. If you really feel guilty about discarding pictures of other people's children, banish them to the junk drawer where you have been cramming them for the last five years anyway. However, all your friends' inappropriate holiday “family newsletters” that you somehow were included on—the ones that go into great detail about dad’s enlarged prostate, John's unexpected appearance on America's Most Wanted and Bruce’s coming out of the closet—feel free to toss into the fireplace. You have your own dysfunctional family to deal with, all others need not apply. Although, they really are a lot of fun to pull out and read after you’ve had a few glasses of wine with friends. Nothing beats post-holiday drunk MadLibs, especially if they involve a family crazier than yours.
5. Finally, when all is put away (or strategically hidden in places your mother-in-law would never think to look) and your house has the appearance of being back to its bland pre-holiday self, sit back and pour yourself a tall glass of wine. You deserve it! 

And that, my friends, is a wrap.