But I still love presents...?
The time is nigh for making the annual wish list for stuff under the tree and in the sock. I still love presents but there are people out there struggling to make ends meet. And I'm the team leader for not only the Replenish food bank Giving Tuesday initiative, but I'm also in charge of the Christmas storefront for the department's swag.
I'm already tired of shopping.
I was late in doing my Marie Kondo cottage cleanup. The rules up there are simple: if it's something we haven't used in a year, it goes. No clutter at the little house on the river. Since we've barely been up the last two months, we have fresh eyes, and this weekend, we got clutter off the counters by hanging some signs and pictures that were gifted and putting the iced tea jar away. We were up two weeks ago to clean up leaves and winterize by putting the outdoor furniture away. And by away, I mean putting that set at the curb with a free sign, and it was gone within a half hour.
That made clean-up easy.
Another phenomenon that happened was cleaning the cupboards to make a food donation to Replenish. Because they do reject donations of expired foods, I paid close attention to the dates on my packages and cans.
Oops.
One of the funniest moments in the show Married With Children is Peg feeding Marcy some very stale popcorn while watching their shows. Marcy openly questions the freshness of their snack, and Peg holds it up and says "Marcy, it says "BEST" by 1979."
Welp, I made a package of "best by 2017" brownies, and that freshness date is there for a reason; those brownies are thick as a brick, and went down just as hard.
So I will be doing another vigorous cleaning of our cupboards, and using up the near-expired or just past-expired foodstuffs in a variety of dishes in the coming weeks, and reminding myself not to hoard my stockpile in the future.
So, where does that get me for Christmas?
Not wanting much, to be honest. I'm horrified by how much we haven't used, enjoyed, or consumed of the things in our house. Going back to Peg Bundy, there was a Christmas episode where she sent the kids up to the bedroom to get a clean shirt from the closet to re-wrap for Al.
Dave could honestly do that in my closet, and I would be delightfully surprised.
Today's attitude would give way quickly to a mad desire for the Black Friday Tieks, as I have been known to go to bed with my credit card in hand for the midnight release. But Friday morning will inevitably give way to shuffling through the ads and talking myself out of buying one more trinket.
This is still so cute
Maybe it's time for another house purge. Instead of wanting another teapot, I'm enjoying one I have had for more than 20 years. It still pours.
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