This Year for Christmas I'm Giving Up OCD

Every year I have this notion that I will be super matchy and wrap all the gifts in coordinating paper, with big bows and curly ribbon. Every year that backfires on me. I get to the store, see all the fun prints, and just buy whatever strikes my fancy at the time. Not this year. This year I spent a lot of time coordinating this silver with that red, while trying to get the most yardage for my money and not spending over $10. (See me be the cheapest person on Planet Earth?) I chose wisely, and was proud of myself.

The kids brought gifts home from school, wrapped in very non-matching paper. The kids brought gifts home from church in even less matchy wrap. I had grand intentions of re-wrapping these in my super-coordinated paper (over top the other paper, of course, so that I didn't see what the kids gave me) but Micah was distressed that I gathered the ones he brought home with the others. He was proud of his choices and knew which ones they were. If I re-wrapped them, I'd be taking that joy from him. I simply can't do that to the kids.

And that's why Christmas is not a good time for being OCD. Christmas is a time of love, and wonderment, and giving. And if the kids want to carefully place their handmade gifts under my tree, wrapped in some of the most hideous paper known to mankind, then so be it. It makes my heart smile.

I'll save the coordinated paper for when the kids are grown and out of the house. And wish that I had hideous under the tree again, with all the sticky fingerprints and torn corners that go with it.