Putting away Christmas

In light of all my cleaning out, I thought it would only be fair to include the current mess that is the basement. I will hopefully be going through the different areas to clean things up, but first on the list is to clean up the Christmas decorations and put everything away back in its boxes.
This year, not having a tree, made decorating a bit easier, but also made unpacking decorations a bit messier since we weren't using all the boxes, I found myself digging through boxes to find what I wanted to use. ie, bigger mess in the end.

This is some of the mess - a Tree stand that we don't use anymore, but still is hanging around. So is the desk light sitting in it. The black box in front is an old tv that we've kept b/c it's easy to move around the house and it has a built in dvd and vcr in it. I know, I laugh sometimes looking at it too, but who can afford to upgrade all their old fav movies at once? And the chandy is a project. That, yes, I've had for a year now, and still haven't gotten around to, but it will get done this summer!

Here is the nice neat stack of Christmas tub, our wrapping paper box, 4 archival boxes with ornaments, the plastic bag has the holiday throw pillows and pay no attention to the blue box, trash can and red bag - they aren't Christmas boxes, but were used to even the load on the tub :)

Here's the second stack that has the nativity scene, window candles, Christmas dishes and my Christmas Star painting. I will be moving the holiday trays or putting them in a bag to keep them clean.

So the print of Providence Harbor is back above the mantle. The mini-trees will be staying until the spring when we can plant them in the yard. I honestly hadn't thought that part through all the way, but it's added greenery for the first floor..... I just really need to take the red bows off them!