Christmas Clutter Countdown Week 1

I am a member of the Yahoo Group Christmas_Clutter_ Countdown. The purpose of the group is to help you declutter your home while you also prepare for the Christmas holidays so that when the holidays roll around you can enjoy them stress-free. The group activities run from mid-August through mid-January. Each week there's a weekly file to download that gives encouragement and lists of things to do to declutter your home and prepare for the holidays.

When my younger sister first told me about the group she said I was probably already doing most of what the group recommended. I have to admit that I'm one of those people who was "born organized" and Robbie says that all my trains run on time.  However, I have gotten lots of ideas from the files that group owner Wendy created for organizing each room of the house and preparing for Christmas. I also get inspired reading posts about what others have accomplished.

The group began on August 16 with week one. I'm a little behind, but here's a summary of what I acomplished for week one of the countdown.

CHRISTMAS WEEK ONE
We were encouraged to think about ways to celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, which by the way are the 12 days after Christmas. Planning ahead to celebrate these days leading up to Epiphany or Three Kings' Day on January 6 helps us celebrate the entire Christmas cycle (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany) and eases the let down that often occurs once Christmas Day is over. We've never really done anything special to celebrate these 12 days and I thought this should be the year we did.

I decided it would be fun to plan to watch a movie each evening, ending with The Little Drummer Boy on January 6th. Really that's the only movie that is a Christmas movie that we'll watch during the 12 days since we typically start watching Christmas movies on Thanksgiving Day and end on Christmas Day with The Nativity Story. Dear hubby helped me and here's the list of movies we came up with - we tried to use at least one word from the 12 days of Christmas song to pick a movie. Some of them are a little stretch so I've added our explanation. Enjoy!

DAY 1 - A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE
The Poseidon Adventure (Susan Day who starred in The Partridge Family also stars in this movie!)
DAY 2 - TWO TURTLE DOVES
Rodan (Story about two flying monsters!)
DAY 3 - THREE FRENCH HENS
Cold Turkey (hens & turkeys – in the same family & both good for eating)
DAY 4 - FOUR CALLING BIRDS
Fantastic Four
DAY 5 - FIVE GOLDEN RINGS
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings
DAY 6 - SIX GEESE A-LAYING
The Wild Geese
DAY 7 - SEVEN SWANS A-SWIMMING
Seven Days in May
DAY 8 - EIGHT MAIDS A-MILKING
Stepford Wives (They were so perfect I’m sure they could milk 8 cows at a time!)
DAY 9 - NINE LADIES DANCING
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (there were originally 9 companions who set out to destroy the ring)
DAY 10 - TEN LORDS A-LEAPING
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
DAY 11 - ELEVEN PIPERS PIPING
Facing the Giants (there are 11 men on a football team)
DAY 12 - TWELVE DRUMMERS DRUMMING
Little Drummer Boy

DECLUTTERING WEEK ONE
Worked on our TV/Exercise/Guest Room, reorganized some of the furniture, put away all the miscellaneous items that were "stored" on the bed, created a spreadsheet inventory of our DVD collection, sorted all the extra linens for guest beds and kept three sets for each bed, donated the remaining linens to our local community outreach, and deep cleaned room. Here are some before and after photos of the room.

Bed and cedar chest with miscellaneous stuff piled on them.

Bed cleaned off, cedar chest moved out, keyboard & guitar moved to this wall out of the way of floor space for exercising.

Bookshelf disorganized.

Bookshelf straighted up and DVDs moved to drawers of armoir.

The armoire and chair and keyboard - everything jammed into this corner.

Dresser moved in beside armoire looks much neater. TV is in the armoire and the drawers hold extra linens for this room's guest bed and our DVD collection.

Week three of the countdown starts today, so I'll be doing a little catch up this week and will hopefully be posting my week two accomplishments in a few days!