Seasonal Decor — and Working Moms
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Ladies, how much do you get into seasonal decor around the house? Do you feel like seasonal decor is harder in some ways for working moms? I’m starting to get into it — when we visited relatives in Texas, my husband’s cousin had the entire house decorated for Halloween, and my older son really liked it.
I’m just starting to collect stuff, and it feels like this IS the season — you’ve got Halloween decor, followed by fall harvest/Thanksgiving decor — and, if you celebrate, Christmas decor.
I like the idea of making our home look nice for the various holidays, and I like the tradition aspect of things, but I will admit, it does seem kind of onerous from a few different angles:
- money to be spent
- “thoughtfulness” required to shop for things, plus remember what you’ve got, where it’s stored, and what condition it’s in
- time invested in putting it up/taking it down
- storage of all the seasonal stuff in the off-season months
Keep in mind, I’m the kind of person who never put up my own tree until a) I had a kiddo and b) my child was old enough to know what it was; before that, I was happy to stick with stockings, lights, and various holiday card displays from friends.
(Ladies, does anyone have any great ways to display or use holiday cards? For friends’ cards, I always scan them at the end of the year before recycling them, and for our own leftover cards, I think this year I’m going to laminate a few different ones and hang them on the tree like ornaments.)
So let’s hear it, ladies — are you into putting up seasonal decor in your home, or do you feel like it’s too much for you to take on as a working mom? If you’re in a small enough space that you couldn’t get into seasonal decor even if you wanted to, do you do something else to mark the holidays? Is this something you delegate to your partner or someone else in your life?
2020 updated images via Stencil. Originally pictured.
I’d love to blame being a working mom on our failure to decorate the outside of the house, but honestly, it’s just something that we’re terrible at, both before and after kids. It’s cold, we really need a new ladder, the old stuff is no good but we don’t want to buy new stuff, etc., etc. I see my neighbors with their pretty light shows and feel bad, then I go to the store and look at the prices on things and the work involved and don’t do anything different.
The inside of the house looks great, though. Although handling delicate ornaments with a 1.5 yr old and a 4 yr old who were just dying to help was a bit of a heart-stopper this year, we’ve consistently decorated the same post-kids.
one more reason i’m happy to be jewish.
We don’t do seasonal decor besides a Christmas tree and we have stockings but currently don’t have a place to hang them. We just don’t do seasonal decor. Nothing for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, etc. On the one hand, it’s cute, but on the other hand, I’d have to buy it and store it in my tiny apartment and dig it out at appropriate times, etc. Plus my husband is strongly anti stuff like that. He doesn’t understand why I would want to get furniture from someplace other than Ikea, why we should get new throw pillows, why I might want a Christmas-y tablecloth when we’re hosting Christmas brunch, and so on. He was like this pre-kids, though. Maybe he’ll get more into it as our daughter gets older.
I love decorating! I have TONS of Halloween decor, a good amount of Xmas decor, and a little 4th of July decor. My husband decorates outside the house, and I decorate inside. Our son LOVES all decorations.
We have plenty of storage space, which obv helps.
We go all out for Halloween and Christmas, both indoors and out. Part of it is because we entertain around both of those holidays, but it’s mostly because we really like it. We liked it before we had a kid so I can’t blame that either. . Somehow we’ve inherited a lot of Christmas decor, so we haven’t had to spend a lot of money. It’s a little nuts (5 trees are up, 2 dozen Dickens Village pieces, wreathes and swags galore, etc). Some of the stuff is getting a little worn out and we will probably cull through it this year. We have plenty of storage space and are have invested in proper containers to keep it all corralled.
I’ve never been one for decorating (and I am terrible about then putting it away after the holiday) so we currently have only a handful of winter/Christmas items out. We always get a live tree though, and we use the excuse that we don’t want to put it up too early or it might die. Maybe we’ll get one this weekend – if not this weekend, then the next.
My father always makes us a nice wreath from greenery he cuts down around his house, so we hang that up on the door, and occasionally some decorations in the windows that could be seen from the porch. Otherwise, no outside decorations.
When we do get decorative items, I try to get things that are more seasonal than holiday specific – like snowmen, snowflakes and holly for winter or fall leaves and pumpkins for fall, instead of specific Christmas or Halloween decorations. That way they can get used for slightly longer and don’t look so odd if they are still around months later.
I love decorating for holidays – probably because I haven’t done a good job decorating my house just for normal use, so the holiday stuff makes it look a lot more pulled together. I actually don’t find this onerous at all, and I really enjoy my house having festive touches, and my kids’ reactions to them.
I pick things up here and there – especially when they’re on sale the week after the holiday – and keep adding to my collection. We have space in the basement to store boxes and a pegboard to hang wreaths (I love wreaths and have one for every season/occasion), etc. I kept it much more minimal when I lived in an apartment. I have two boxes each for Christmas and Halloween, one each for Winter/Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Spring/Easter, 4th of July, and Fall/Thanksgiving + one extra box that stays empty (they nest). They’re all the same size, but not all of them are full. I just pull out the box of decorations and the extra empty box to put things away into, swap out the stuff, and put the boxes back. I use clear plastic boxes so stuff can rotate among them and I don’t need to label. My house is pretty small and the decorations are only for the main floor, so it really doesn’t take much time at all to put things up indoors.
Outdoor decorations for Halloween and Christmas lights take some more doing, but as long as the weather is nice it’s nbd to do them while my kids are playing outside on a weekend. The Christmas tree is the biggest pain, but there’s no way I’d skip that.
As far as money, I think the thing to do is to buy it all on sale after the holiday is over. You’ll quickly amass a very nice collection, if that’s what you want to do.
The trickier part – at least if you live in a small space – is storage. We have a storage room (finally) in our building but it’s still a pain to go down there to get stuff and switch things out.
I like to have my house reflect the seasons in some way. I have a Christmas quilt which I put on at the beginning of Advent, and I like to have different quilts and blankets in each season. I do the same with tablecloths and napkins. For Halloween and Easter I decorate a bit, and for Christmas I do more. I roll it out slowly throughout Advent, and everything stays up through 3 Kings’ Day in January (or whenever thereafter I get a chance to take it down). And I do mean slowly–we might put up the tree this weekend.
I’m not much of a decorator. I can barely keep up with the basics of running my house.We put up a Christmas tree and some outdoor lights and stockings, and that’s about it. Now I feel kind of grinchy.
My dad is retired and LOVES seasonal decorations, so when I lived in a single family house, he would come over and deck it out. Now that I’m in a condo, I don’t do exterior decorations and there is so little storage space that I don’t do much interior decoration either – hang something on my one hook on the wall, maybe a vase of seasonal baubles (gourds, ornaments, easter eggs, etc), and a Christmas tree for the month of December (which sometimes turns into a Valentine’s tree).
I inherited a love of seasonal decorating from my mom, and I’ve forced it on my husband. Once we had a baby, I started adding a bit every year. I hit up Pottery Barn Kids after holidays for sale chairbackers and kids’ tableware for the following year (Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, so far.) I have Rubbermaid boxes for each holiday; storing all of them is a pain, but reliving parts of my childhood and (I hope) creating memories for my children and the bonding/keep them busy time decorating are worth the cost and hassle of storing the decorations.
We do a lot more now that my kids are 6 and 3. We have 3 live trees – 2 are small ones. My kids each want their own trees so we have 5 acres and they just get planted. They each have metallic blue and pink ones in their room too courtesy of Grandma. My MIL comes and decorates the rest of the house and my staircase with greenery. I care about the trees but give her free reign over everything else. Also my 6 year old wanted a Christmas village so I broke down and bought him some this year and he loves it. I got the really cheap ones in case they break it but why will spend an hour re-arranging it and making up stories about the people and the houses. Christmas is my favorite holiday and this year we are doing the big family gathering for the first time so I (or rather my MIL) will need to go all out. I change out table clothes and add a few fall decor items in the fall.
Way to go Women! Especially working moms and to be moms. You people are giving great inspiration for other women too for achieving in life. I love decorating, be it small scale or large, either budget friendly or expensive, but its fun doing that activity, mostly i do budget friendly decor. Women do a lot more than just this. Its Great!