Since the fourth was yesterday, I found an article on the 12 months of holiday clutter.
Beware the "Danger Days" that accelerate the accumulation of clutter.
JANUARY
News Years Eve
We insist on starting our year off miserable with too much liquor, rich food, tootie horns, hats, streamers, pages of unresolved resolutions and twenty-seven more calendars than we'll ever use.
FEBRUARY
Valentine's Day
This high holy day of accumulations rolls around just about the day the last piece of Christmas Clutter finally disappears. We only prepare for it a week or so in advance, but manage to swiftly replace the missing Christmas junk with frilly paper doilies, cheap candies stuck together in a gaudy dish bought for the occasion, over-frosted cookies that hang around for weeks in drawers and on shelves, shiny cupid-shaped cake pans to be tucked (or crammed) into storage for next year.... And who with a grain of romance in their soul could throw away empty embossed candy boxes with lace and ribbons?
APRIL
Easter
Think of all the awful Easter bonnets and broken Easter baskets, battered chicks and bunnies, baggies of plastic grass, and picked-over jelly beans stashed somewhere; along with the leftover egg coloring kits and peekaboo candy eggs that we'll never eat and never throw away.
MAY
Opening day of fishing
Full grown adults (especially the males) become insane weaklings on this day, so hide the checkbook. They buy assorted rods, reels, creels, lures, and hooks, fish fooling and finding gadgets, books and bait incubators, tons of real and artificial foodstuffs, attractants, repellents, and special fishing togs, 80 percent of which are expensive (and ultimately destined to dry-rot in the storage room).
JULY
Fourth of July
We always get twice as many sparklers, wienie buns, cooler, and charcoal briquettes as we need, and more suntan lotion that we could use in three summers- and then spend the rest of the year trying to keep it all out of sight.
OCTOBER
Halloween
We buy racks of creepy costumes, a bale or orange and black napkins, a six foot paper skeleton and witches for the walls, keep a 50 cent mask with our kid's first trick-or-treat candy crushed on it- and then at the after Halloween sale buy four more plastic lanterns to store till next year.
NOVEMBER
Thanksgiving
Got to have ugly miniature turkeys, six extra giant platters, assorted relishes in assorted little awkward display dishes, shedding centerpieces and door ornaments, and an extra meat thermometer in case the other three extras don't work. (And we'll keep those gap-toothed Indian corn ears and dried-up gourds into infinity).
DECEMBER
Christmas
Keep the wrinkled wrappings, crushed bows, and snarled ribbons, sagging Santa candles, frayed pine cones, faded wreaths, broken bulbs and tree ornaments, every tree stand we ever bought, nad the last two surviving pieces of the Nativity set (even if Joseph's head is missing).
Some others to beware of
Mother's Day, Father's Day, Memorial Day, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, any opening day, reunions, graduations, showers, Election Day, St. Patricks' Day, Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays.
For some reason we can't just enjoy the spirit of the day; we have to "thing" it to death. It's as if we have to prove we're loving or patriotic or happy or thankful. But the proof is in the feeling, not in the accessories.
Taken from Don Aslett's Clutter be Gone.
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