This is not a picture of my house, but doesn’t it look festive?!

Since October I’ve been seeing one blog post after another from bloggers showing their new fall decor, and then their new Thanksgiving decor, and now their Christmas decorations. While I love seeing the beautiful decorations and am in awe of some of the things people put together out there, sometimes it seems like it’s just a contest to see who can show us the most different ways you can decorate for Christmas because every year they scrap everything from the past and come up with something totally new.

In some ways I like and totally understand it ~ if you love design you’re always looking for new inspiration, trying out new things and keeping everything fresh. But on the other hand, it just seems like a whole lot of stuff… to buy, and to store, and then to get rid of and re-buy all new stuff every year… I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it.

Honestly this is something I struggle with in many areas of my life, but especially design… from seasonal decorations to big renovations, everything feels outdated at some point, and even the most conscientious designer has projects where there are things you can’t salvage.

Even though you might not guess by looking at me, I’m a total earth loving tree hugger and I care a lot about how my life and choices impact the planet. While I’m not perfect by any means, I try to be as thoughtful as possible and if there’s a way for me to be more green, I’m gonna do it.

Living in a big city means that we don’t have a lot of extra space to keep seasonal decorations, heck, we don’t have a lot of space to keep a lot of extra anything! So quite a few years ago I decided to forgo the holiday decorating, and I never looked back. To be honest, I kind of love it. In a way it’s freeing to not have another item on my to-do list, and I like having less stuff. Traveling for the holidays often means I’m not even home to enjoy the decorations on the actual holiday.

While I can’t say that I won’t ever do holiday decorating again, one thing that I like about going sans decorations is that life is simpler, and I’m consuming, and inevitably throwing away less stuff. So for now, the non decorating continues and I’ll work on coming up with other things to share {maybe a non-gift gift guide… ooohhh, liking that idea already}…

Are you a big time holiday decorator, or a minimalist no-decorations person like me?! Either way, I hope you are having a great holiday season so far {whether there’s a tree in your living room or not!}.