The Ornaments, part III

[psocoptera]

The ornaments my mom sent home with me had more than doubled my total ornaments here, and we already had more here than we could or wanted to hang. So this year, I did a Big Sort, splitting them up between the ones we definitely wanted to hang (now on the tree) and ones we could pack away in long-term storage and not even get out next year. (There also ended up being a third category that we weren't hanging this year but that we weren't quite ready to exile.) Both kids double-checked a couple of times that I absolutely wasn't going to get rid of anything, just keep them safely somewhere where we wouldn't have to dig through them looking for the ones we wanted. So it's not really disadventure, but at least I won't have to deal with them every year.

(I genuinely do not mind keeping all my kids' less-loved ornaments indefinitely, even the Harry Potter ones, or the cheap Olaf who is turning yellow. That's their childhood, who knows where their nostalgia will vest. When we divided things up last year my mom was pretty upset by the idea that I didn't want every single one of *my* childhood ornaments, including ones I couldn't personally remember ever seeing before, or some ugly cheap plastic things I wouldn't mind never seeing again. So there's one whole box of the long-term storage that I will someday accidentally lose in a move someday open, double-check for late-forming nostalgia, and then ask the kids for permission to cull, I guess?)