The other evening, I noticed that pretty much all the neighbors on the block had their Christmas Trees already decorated. With their blinds up and curtains parted, I could see in and it made me feel, well, a little behind in my own holiday decorating.  So I opened the boxes of ornaments. The individual ornaments that were in separate boxes were combined with the others that had been thrown into a common box the previous January. I could accommodate all the ornaments in two medium-sized boxes and with those in hand, I made my way to the tree.

I decided that I would decorate systemically, but with little rigidity. This would be fun. And there were other people in the living room so at least I was not doing this alone, even though I was the only one doing any decorating. I started at the bottom and went around with six of the biggest ornaments. I mentally divided the tree around from top to bottom in multiple layers and I also did the same vertically.  I proceeded to take the largest ornaments out first and as I did, I sort of remembered where they came from. I had several dated ornaments that took me back, as well as some that were hand-made by my children when they were in kindergarten. I proceeded to decorate the entire tree in that manner. I was systemic, which made the chore fun—kind of like a game– but I stopped to enjoy the task as well. I decorated that tree using all the ornaments in under an hour, including the time it took to stop and enjoy the ones I really love.