The Ups and Downs of Decorating for the Holidays While Working on the House

Christmas is this week and I’m sad to say I don’t have a big tree up in my house. I had plans to put one up, but this year things are different. My house needs work and I don’t have anywhere to put a tree up.

I don’t know if I mentioned this in a previous Blogmas post, or how detailed I was in talking about my house, but my house needs work done to it. The basement isn’t completely finished and the lighting in it is poor. Very poor. There were also problems with windows leaking (Which I didn’t know about) and paint coming off the walls in areas where they shouldn’t be. The bathroom needs some work (Although the paint job I did in it really helped things out) and there were issues with the water supply.

All these problems, and probably a few more I can’t think of at the time I wrote this post, have led my house to become a disaster. It already was a disaster in more than one way, but right now it’s worse. Not bad enough to move out while things get worked on, but not good enough to put up a large Christmas tree.

All the living areas I have in my house now have things from the basement or things that should go into the basement but can’t. Everything looks cluttered and it in the way of just having a normal looking home. Whenever I think of how much stuff I stored in the basement, I get upset. I like to be a tidy person yet I can live with a mess here and there. Yet, when it comes to the state of my house today? I’m having a really hard time living with it.

Even though I’m stressed to see how much stuff I kept in the basement (And walking around it every single day) I still want to celebrate Christmas. So, instead of a big tree, I’m using small trees I already own. I have two and they can light up. I put one in my living room and another in the kitchen/dining room area. I also put up some wreaths, garland, a wood Christmas tree farm sign I painted a few years ago, a wood gingerbread house I painted, a nativity, and three ornaments on ornament hangers. Everything sits on tables, on top of my hutch, and other flat areas around my house.

Seeing them brings me joy, but it does kind of clash with the clutter from the basement. Almost as if I didn’t try that hard to make everything more festive by cleaning. Yet, I can’t everything right now. Until things are in a better state of completion, I need to embrace the awkwardness of the decor and clutter for this holiday season.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!