2 ways to take down your Christmas tree

YOU spent hours in the kitchen, labouring over a hot stove to make the perfect Christmas lunch, which took mere minutes for the family to devour.

You took time and effort to unpack and set up the Christmas tree, carefully, and painstakingly for some, untangling the string of lights, wiping the dust off the shiny, glittery balls, undoing knots in last year’s tinsel and arranging everything on the plastic branches of the tree to perfection.

Gifts pile up beneath the synthetic branches of the tree, intricately wrapped in overpriced sheets of Christmas paper and embellished with ribbons of gold, silver or other metallic shades, all to be ripped open on Christmas morning, the wrapping paper haphazardly discarded once the contents have been revealed.

Christmas day has passed and festive cheer has been replaced by the normal daily routines of the other 364 days of the year, with one added chore to make it unique… taking down the Christmas tree. To carry out this task, you have a few options, some more mundane than others but, any which way, you’ll get the job done…

1. #NeatButBoring Your first option would be to retrace the steps you took to erect the synthetic symbol of the season to be jolly.

Take down the last decoration you put up first, place it in a box, the second to last next, place it in a box, and so on and so forth, working your way through, until everything is back in its rightful place, neatly packaged and ready for next year’s Christmas spirit. #neatbutboring

2. #NoMessNoFuss Another option would be to get your hands on a large roll, or perhaps two, depending on the size of your tree, of reasonable quality clingwrap. This requires a slight level of skill to be done absolutely correctly, without losing any of your balls or other embellishments.

You will need to open up the one end of the clingwrap and wrap it around a starting point either at the top or the base of the tree and carefully wrap the entire tree without upsetting the arrangement too much.

Once satisfactorily wrapped, place the tree on a top shelf somewhere, or the back of a cupboard or in the garage until next year. The advantage of this method is that, next year, you just have to unwrap the clingfilm and you’ll have a ready to use, fresh and fully decorated Christmas tree. #thinkingahead #nomessnofuss