**DECLUTTERING BY FEATURING**
34:45 Amy talked about honoring her husband’s collections and her plushie by featuring them as decor.
We had already been doing this with Christmas decor by rotating themes from year to year – Santas, nutcrackers, angels, and snowmen – and by having smaller theme trees – birds and fantasy beings.
But this year, I found a way to also use that tactic to fight Seasonal Affective Disorder. The last half of winter is extremely hard for me, and the techniques I’ve tried in recent years have been of only minimal help.
Realizing that my son and I have collected quite a bit of dragon decor that doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves, I instituted Dragon Season from January 15 to February 28.
We had:
– Dragon fountain, which my mother had made for me, on top of the piano
– Plush baby dragon in a basket
– 2 dragon figures on top of bookcases
– Cardboard dragon sculpture my son had made on top of bookcase
– Dragon ornaments on an ornament tree
– Dragon towels
– Dragon hot pads
– Dragon cup & mugs
– Dragon games: Tsuro & Wyrmspan
– How to Train Your Dragon movies
– Dragon books: The Bakery Dragon & Temeraire series
Having a separate season focused on so many of our favorite things was so much fun! The dragon decor cheered me up, and the themed activities really elevated the whole season, just like Halloween and Christmas.
This experiment worked out so well that I’ve declared that we’re doing a similar thing in my secondary S.A.D. season. August 1 to September 15 will be Ocean Season!
I plan to have:
– Movies like Splash and the Pirates of the Caribbean series
– Books like the Earthsea Trilogy and Hunt for Red October
– Games like Oceans and Finspan
– Decor like my sea creature ornaments, blown glass jellyfish, and large ceramic tropical fish
– Ocean tableware like a ceramic tropical fish-shaped covered dish and sand-dollar coasters
Having time set aside to feature more of my favorite things, plus fun activities to remind me of a favorite setting now far away, will hopefully be a great way to endure the oppressive heat of late summer.
I’ve also noticed that actually featuring our collected items instead of just stashing them away has made me think more critically about which items display or function well in which places and whether I really need to collect more or not. Having a full ornament tree seems to suggest that I don’t *need* more dragon ornaments….
