Glittery, matt or gloss. Colourful or muted.  It’s all so tempting. Whatever sh*t is underneath it offers the hope of something sparkling and new which will change your life. And who doesn’t like looking at their own pile of satisfyingly wrapped present when the task is finally complete?

Well, let me remind you – something that appears so helpful will frankly be a pain for the rest of the year. It’s awkward shape means it’s often a nuisance to store and it sits around being useless for the next eleven and and a half months.

Most of my decluttering clients have a glut of wrapping paper which lives at the bottom of wardrobes or is dumped in lofts, garages and spare rooms.

Actually, I’m just as guilty so this year I decided to take stock. There was a lot. I mean a lot.

 

So I vowed not to buy any more until I’ve used up what I’ve got.

Christmas wrap is one of those panic purchase items – you buy some gifts then worry about what you’re going to wrap them in as you stand in line to pay – never confident in the amount you think you have and then those pesky shop keepers stick loads of it by the tills. Supermarkets offer the most temptation as you’re already pushing a trolley so it doesn’t seem as much of an effort to carry huge rolls if you can wheel them around.

So try not to buy before you’ve taken stock. Since going through my stash I’ve found a family of jiffy bags have been mating in the drawer. I’ve trawled the internet for ideas to sex them up for Christmas but to no avail. Any ideas welcome…

Whatever your thoughts on Amazon they can send stuff out in reusable cloth gift bags which have been useful.

Or buy similar from Etsy.

I’m getting a sad amount of pleasure re-using gift bags and paper which I managed to salvage last Christmas.

I intend to do the same this year but need to work on leaving a more acceptable amount of time between the present being removed from the bag and me grabbing it. I plan to keep my eye on where it gets put to reclaim later. Or I’ll volunteer to ‘tidy up’ the post-present debris so I can rescue any reusable pieces of wrapping paper too.

Here’s some I rescued last year which helpful as it already had the relevant details for this year written on it – win, win..

In an ideal world I’ll also collect random bits of tissue paper, ribbon and string to pimp up said reused bags and paper.

And when you’ve smuggly used up all your stash you can get really resourceful. Firstly, never underestimate the power of brown paper. Think Julie Andrews and her favourite things. These days you can get lovely silver and gold or striped string etc. And string is cheaper than ribbon.

Brown paper can easily be brought up a notch with a few flourishes such as some stamps or hand-drawn stars. Some clever people on Pinterest dress their’s with buttons or sprigs of something from outside attached with said string. I’ve seen someone else tuck in some handmade paper snowflakes – the ones we all learnt to make at primary school. I tried an old cut up Christmas card and was quite pleased with the result.

 

 

Last year my odd (but clean) fluffy socks, again tied with a bit of ribbon, went down well. They’re coming out again.

 

 

 

Children’s pictures also make great gift wrap.

When I was feeling a little smug at using up my wrapping backlog it was then, of course,  that I found a whole load more  …. hidden in a ‘the special place’ which I forgot existed.

Luckily I remembered it before Christmas… but I might need to buy some more presents just to use the damn stuff up.

 

About the only job my children are keen to help with each Christmas is dressing the tree. They love the way it signifies the start of the festive season but also take great delight in sorting through the decorations.

Each year we unearth the decorations  xxxxx which are stored and wrapped in increasingly scruffy white tissue paper. It’s like opening a seasonal memory box – they’ll remember the ones their Nanna gave them or those they made at nursery. Old favourites get put on the tree first – usually in a big clump near the middle. The ones which get left on the dining room table, as their interest wanes, are the decorations I think about chucking.

When it comes to a sentimental decoration ask yourself if you actually like it? Are you keeping it because you think you should or because you really want to? Well, tell should to shove off and put the decoration in a bag destined for the charity shop. Over the years I’ve found the meaning of some decorations fades so I can let them go. And don’t keep anything which reminds you of unhappy times.

When it comes to handmade kiddie decorations ask yourself if they are past their best? Has the glue turned yellow? Has most of the glitter fallen off? Have the children made better, more pleasing models since? Well, if the answer is yes you’re allowed to say that these decorations have served their purpose over the years and now it is time for the new creations to replace them. By now your children will have already experienced the pleasure of making them and seeing them on tree in previous years.

 

 

If you do feel the need to get more decorations try to stick with a theme to limit the overwhelming choice. My criteria is hand knitted charity ones – ideally made by old ladies for a good cause. The only decoration I’ve bought this year is a cute knitted navy jumper with brown elbow patches and a white RNLI logo, with all the proceeds going to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. It feels better to buy something with a story behind it rather something mass produced and sold by a high-street chain. It is also  another way to make a festive charitable donation now I’ve stopped buying any Christmas cards.

If you feel you still have too many decorations try to order them in preference – so your Top 30 or ask yourself which ones you’d like your children to hang from their own trees one day  – so which ones will become family heirlooms?

Last year was the first time I managed to let go off my control and let my children decorate the tree. I didn’t move one thing. It was hard but I tried to remember that there will be plenty of years in the future when the kids won’t be at home to help. And frankly if anyone is going to judge me on the spacing and aesthetic balance of my decorations they shouldn’t be visiting in the first place.

A couple of years ago I had the sad task of emptying and selling my elderly dad’s four-bedroom house as following a fall he’d had to move into a care home. As well as having to sort his own possessions there was the task of processing the things which he’d inherited from his parents (my grandparents) which were still stacked up in boxes in his home office although they’d died years ago.

As well as the dozens of packets of photos there were hundreds of individual slides. They reminded me of tedious evenings as a child when we’d be ushered into a darkened room and be expected to be enthralled by the images of someone’s first foreign holiday projected onto the wall, so I wasn’t in any rush to retrieve them from the storage unit where they’ve been living since I’d cleared the house.

But we are working to gradually clear the storage unit after a visit this autumn I bought a box of slides home to work out what to do with. Without even having anything to view them on I set aside five minutes to give the slides a cursory glance but half an hour later sensed I’d uncovered some forgotten gems.

So, just by holding them up to the light, I whittled 800 slides down to 200. I then sent them to photosos.co.uk who converted the slides into digital images which they returned to me on a memory stick.

It was wonderful to view the images full screen on my computer. Some of them hadn’t been seen for at least 60 years. I’d been shown lots of cute baby photos of my dad but here were wonderful images of his teenage life and young adulthood, then his time as a young dad.

I could relate to the shots as in some he would have been the same age as my daughter is now, then I saw him flourish into a rather handsome man and I could see him experiencing the joy of fatherhood.

One image of my teenage dad laughing on the beach in his swimming trunks, looking so fit and full of life in the fresh air, made me cry as I thought of my dad now hobbling around with a walking frame and spending most of his time in his bedroom.

I used blurb.co.uk, which is very user friendly, to transform the digital images into a beautiful hardback book which I intend to give my dad for Christmas.

 

 

Just by taking time out and making a little bit of effort I’ve rescued these wonderful memories and hopefully created a Christmas present for my dad which will mean so much more to him than socks or hankies.

The shots are all the more poignant as now he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s he’s in the final chapter of his life. I’m looking forward to hearing him sharing his stories  which lay within the pages of The Lost Slides.