Usually by now everything has been packed up and put away, out of sight and out of mind. I started converting things a while ago so that the decorations would not be in plastic bags stuffed into marked boxes, but rather in sealed plastic crates and placed on shelving units. Of course, some of it, including the artificial tree, remains in boxes.
I have also been struggling with an apartment search. My townhouse is fine ... for now. I pay a decent rate for a decent living space that functions more like a single-family house as long as the townhouse attached to me stays empty. Unfortunately, there is zippo insulation between the walls next door and mine, so when someone does live next door, it's actually more like they're living in my house with me. This is true of all apartments, except that here I do all of the maintenance and pay all of the utilities. I'm getting too old for that shit.
These two topics have been colliding for exactly a year now, which is when I first started repacking the holiday stuff into tote-able containers and when I started hauling other stuff out of the basement. I have convinced myself that two things needs to happen before I can seriously plan to downsize: My youngest needs to fly out of the nest, and my basement needs to be cleared out of everything except the washer and dryer (and the kayaks, which fit perfectly in the small nook under the stairs).
AHA! It's not at all that I am hesitant to pack up Christmas; it's that I am hesitant to pack up Christmas and put it back into the basement. The basement is ground zero in this dilemma. The other part of this whole conundrum is that the rooms here are tiny (fit a bed and a dresser and maybe fit a few shirts into the minuscule closets if wire hangers are turned sideways). I have another tiny bedroom off of my tiny bedroom, and I use the back tiny bedroom as my closet. I've done a fabulous job of clearing out that area, as well, so it's less than half-full.
What it ... What if I make a deal with myself that I can ONLY keep what fits into the back tiny room in an organized, non-fire-hazard manner and completely clear out the basement as originally planned!? If I do this, it means that I will visually be able to see how I can function in a smaller space as I will not have crap all over my townhouse. It also means that I will have to pack Christmas into an even tighter, smaller space.
This is another "AHA" moment as I have some empty plastic containers from last winter's clear-out of two-thirds of the cellar. I hauled out thirteen trash bags of stuff one week alone and more after that. I could ... I could ... Dare I think it? Dare I say it? I could DOWNSIZE WITH CONFIDENCE.
I'll get to it, I'll get to it. For now, I will procrastinate in real time but plan my attack in cyber time. Eventually, like the cosmos, these two concepts will collide. There may not be a Big Bang as a result, but at least my basement will be clear and Christmas will be down.
