Clump #265: Order Christmas cards; day twenty-three of National Blog Posting Month.

The photo above is of our younger daughter who is studying in Russia. She follows this blog, dear girl, and wrote about the post of a few days ago: “Just read your Little Star post, and I have to say I’m really glad you decided to keep (and even mend) the necklace.  A lot of fond memories with that.  I guess not all clutter is clump.”

As promised, I got my head back in the holiday game (is it a game?) and struggled to order our Christmas cards online.  Even with help from the computer gurus in the house, it was, as my husband said, “a clump fail.” Undeterred, I went out to Target.  All seemed to be going swimmingly, until the clerk informed me that their machine was down … come back tomorrow.  So close.  Oh well, at least the order is in.

I recently found last year’s cards, holiday newsletters, and various clippings in a de-clumping pile:

I do want to keep a few cards and letters for posterity. And I can’t throw out good envelopes.  The clippings are another matter.

My parents were very good at throwing things out, but I wish they had saved one thing.  When I was in early grade school, we were supposed write a story to go along with a cartoon picture of  “Bella the Ballerina,” a hippo in a tutu, along the lines of Disney’s Fantasia.  I remember my teacher laughing at my paper until she cried, and then I brought it home, showed it to my parents, and they also laughed until they cried. Obviously I was too young to know what was so funny.  I really wish I could read it again as an adult, but, alas, I can’t.

The article below is one thing I did keep and was able to find for this post!  Proof that a major clutter shift has truly taken place in our house.

Long, long ago, our son and younger daughter were left at home by their older sister who was going to school.  Such sour moods that morning!  I thought I had a great idea to break the funk, and said, “Hey, there’s a new grocery store opening.  Let’s go shopping there and check out the festivities!”  Well, I’m sure the store managers were hoping to get an upbeat photo of the ribbon-cutting, or some other such good PR photo-op.  Instead, the photo that was put on the front page of the Daily Local was of self-conscious me in mom-jeans and my two still-sour-faced kids above the caption, “All Shopped Out.”  No amount of balloons could lift their spirits.

At the time, I remember thinking, ‘Well, here is my fifteen minutes of fame: pushing a shopping cart with cranky kids in it.’  But then I looked up at the story I shared the page with, about John Du Pont (the subject of the movie Foxcatcher, which opened this weekend), and thought, ‘You know what, there are a lot worse fifteen minutes of fame.  I’ll take it.’ Is it a coincidence that the grocery store is now closed?

So not all clutter is clump.  This paper will be kept as a family heirloom. The trick is using discernment in de-clumping.

Now to the rest of my holiday to-do list, and getting myself All shopped out.