The calm before the crapping (up of your home)

Pre Holiday jitter-prep

Nov 17, 2024

text — Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Listen. Do you hear that? No? That’s because there isn’t much to hear….yet. It’s that no man’s land before Thanksgiving and the big mama, Chrisma-anuka-wanza.

I’m almost tempted to make dinner plans with friends it’s so quiet now. My calendar is blissfully free of BIG EVENTS. Flip a few pages forward (in my black daytimer seen here), and it’s a tsunami of Must Attends morning, noon and night. While you’re enjoying this moment, post election and pre Holiday shit show, you’re only making it harder on yourself. Wake up! Your family is lurking, soon to descend on your home. How is it looking? Have you started holiday shopping for people? So much for the calm.

Decrap Ya Kidz:

Before your little muffins come home with bags of dirty stuff, now is a good time to declutter-crap the kids’ rooms. Sure, two of mine have graduated college and one is still in, but that doesn’t mean we don’t serve as a Self-Storage facility for them. We do. And before you suggest it, the idea “I’ll just go in with a bunch of trash bags and clear it out” isn’t possible. For starters, I wouldn’t like anyone doing that to me and more importantly, we’d probably pay for it all to be replaced. Somehow.

Just beware: cleaning out your kid’s room can be hazardous to your health. Your mental health when you find nips and vapes and your physical health from the dust that has settled over the rolling piles of participation awards and baseball caps. Funny, when our parents cleaned out our rooms after they thought it was safe we weren’t moving home, the minute we graduated college, they found different detritus.

No one drank nips in the old days except disgruntled old guys who smelled bad and needed a shave. And we wouldn’t have left anything like that behind because we wanted it and it cost money. Which we didn’t have much of. What our parents could find were notes and letters. That is where they could get a little window into our shadow world. We parents don’t get that thrill today. And, I suppose there might have been frisky magazines in the boys rooms. Not my department, but like letters, they’ve gone electric.

How do I manage my kids stuff when they aren’t home? Big plastic storage boxes that can be stacked into a closet. It is getting better, though. We aren’t home decor magazine level decrapped, but there is less stuff than there was a year ago. I’m even planning on redecorating their rooms. To do that the rooms can no longer be Self-Storage units. Huzzah.

Why bother redecorating, you ask? I have some weird need to walk by an open door in my home and see a room that is perfect and clean, always. This is what I came up with for my empty nest, mid life crisis. I don’t want to look in and see a gym or a room-sized luxury closet. I definitely don’t want to see the eighth grade makeover in gray and white à la Ikea that it is now. I just want to see a room that I would be proud to have someone stay in. No one will stay in these rooms. My friends have their own homes and no one visits.

Refer a friend

Decrap Ya Howze

This time of year it’s not a bad idea to clear out the rooms that will get the most use when family returns. The living room, the TV-den room. Your bathroom. Despite having their own bathroom they will be in your bathroom. Buy more toilet paper and toothpaste. Hide your expensive hair and skin products.

Open the drawers of the side tables, the bureaus, the built-ins, the cabinets. How many old wine corks does one home need? Throw them out. That Playbill from Hamilton you and the kids went to last Thanksgiving? Throw it out. Only a few of those cute cocktail napkins that say SOS! (Severely over Scheduled!). So cute. Out. Go get new ones. Keep going.

Is there a place where things seem to pile up? magazines, books, mail. Chuck the magazines, move the books to shelves or giveaway, burn the mail. I mean, read the mail and pay your bills. Pay mine, too while you’re at it. Is there more newspaper next to the fireplace than you will ever burn? You know what to do. Stains on the rug from last Holiday season? There is still time to get them cleaned. Call today! Windows dirty? Paint chipped? Get on it!

Maybe the furniture needs rearranging. Have at it! Take all the little boxes and frames and bowls off the tables and see how it looks bare. Then, add a few things back. There. That is better! How about the walls. You can move art around you know. Just a thought.