January means packing away all those holiday decorations around here. I don't have as much as most of the people I know despite Stretch's complaints that "we're packing too much, Troop!" (I think we're up to one tree box, one wreath bag and three plastic tote bins.)
At any rate, as I was playing hunt the ornaments on the tree while trying to match up ornaments to their orginal boxes, I started to think about what I was doing. Just a week before I'd watched my mother-in-law packing away her Christmas tree ornaments. She'd grab an ornament, wrap it in tissue paper, and stuff as many as she could into a shoebox or other cardboard box. I can't do this. For a number of reasons, my personality type being one.
But the other reason is that when I pack up my Christmas decorations, I do so as if I'm packing for a move. Which I am. We've never spent more than 2 Christmases in any one house. So the odds are always good that the holiday decor I'm packing up will be involved in a PCS before I see them again. In fact, although I have no idea where next Christmas will find us, I KNOW it won't be here!
I'm not just storing my things (like my mother-in-law), I'm packing them for moving. So, if I'm a little more careful about how I pack things away, it's because I want to make every effort to still have them next year in case they are trucked, shipped or otherwise transported and manhandled to anywhere CONUS or OCONUS, for that matter.
It's not just me being a tad bit overzealous. Really.
