Going Against the Grain

If you were like me you love to decorate. For all the holidays, for all the parties, and for no reason at all! And if you’re like me you also are pretty good about not stressing over your decorating, even when your cardboard boxes full of decor are hard to get in and out of storage. That is one of my strong points I believe. Why do I not stress over my decorating? I’m not 100% sure why I don’t but part of the reason is that I have never been the perfectionist when it comes to decorating. I like details, sure, but I’m also intelligent enough to know that some details will just never be seen so they are just not that important to me.

Christmas for example, I absolutely do not shape my tree before I decorate it and I don’t string my lights on every single branch. Two reasons, one, because I know I need big gaps to put in big ornaments and two, because I put so many ornaments on my tree a lot of the lights simply get covered by the large ornaments so there is no need for every single branch to have a million lights that are simply going to get covered.

A wedding for example: I don’t believe every single table needs to look exactly alike. Number one, because I love the non-uniformity of things, such as banquet tables at the reception. To me that difference in tables offers a more relaxed feel to a venue, almost as if you just welcomed people into your house and had a party at the last minute. Would the party really have been that much better had you had matching paper plates and napkins? Or was it an amazing party anyway with your everyday white paper plates and paper towels and no napkins at all?

How about the eight-year-old‘s birthday party, with bounds and bounds of cardboard boxes wrapped up? Does anybody really look at all the Pinterest logos on every dish of food that you made into a themed food bowl? Or do you think maybe the eight-year-olds just love running around with their friends, playing games and eating a ton of sugary treats? When we stress over all the minute details are we truly doing it for our own enjoyment of decorating or are we doing it maybe to make ourselves feel like we fit in, because the Jones family goes to these such links we should too, if we want to be like the Jones.

So this evening I am hoping that you were like me, if you’re not like me and you do a lot of stressing over your decorating maybe you simply need to do one party or one decorating job and purposely leave things unorganized, purposely do certain things quickly and leave out the detail work or maybe entertain spontaneously before you even have a chance to do any decorating for the party. I do believe that you will have every bit as much fun at your party, if not more. Life is meant to be spent with people not things. And I’m not saying that we don’t get enjoyment from decorating or seeing beautiful things, what I am saying is, there’s enough stress in life without stressing over decorating.