Reset

There seem to be two clear camps when it comes to Christmas decorations, there are those who hate to part with them and those who can't wait to get them down.  While I love decorating for Christmas and tend to have everything up for a month, once it's over, it's over.  After a month of cats playing with the Christmas tree and things everywhere, it's kind of a relief to hit "reset" and put things back to normal.

I actually have a slight obsession with resetting.  Every weekend my first goal is to put the house back to base zero.  Clearing clutter off of the kitchen island, getting shoe moved away from the front door, removing pet fluff from... everything.  I don't do well with mess and piles of things and general amassing of stuff on all of our surfaces.  I can't really relax for the weekend until I can stand in the middle of our open plan kitchen/dining/living room and everything is just straightened back out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a clean freak and my level of tidy once almost drove a Lithuanian roommate out of her mind (only time in my life I was the messy one!!).  During the week we tend to just let things happen and only deal with the real mess.  When life gets exciting I embrace it.  But there's something nice about just returning to normal- normal eating habits, normal sleep schedules, normal routines.

January in our part of the world is cold and dark.  I don't like January.  I don't usually catch the wave of excitement starting off a new year.  I've always worked in schools.  The new year excitement for me usually comes at the end of summer.  Instead in January I just look for that "reset" after the holidays.  If January will give me that then we can get along ok, though I doubt we'll ever be buddies.