Journey To Enough

It’s 2019. I was in a fragile emotional state (to say the least) after spending a long, long time in the NICU with our fourth. We’d just finished building our beautiful new dream home. Our forever home. (Side note- not.) And I was excited to have our first Christmas together in the new house. The algorithm decided I needed a new, beautiful, ginormous, realistic Christmas tree to fulfill all my Christmas wishes for decades and decades to come (this would solve all my emotional stress right?! right!?)

So I bought this Christmas tree.

You already know where this is going, it solved nothing, though it was beautiful. Flash forward and it’s 2026 now- I’ve spent 7 years hauling this Christmas tree across 4 different states (I’m not even going to count how many houses within those states.)

Here’s our tree the night before Christmas 2025, always a magical night!

I’ve committed to declutter and downsize this year and I’m curious to crunch the numbers to see how much this Christmas tree cost me yearly. I pulled up some old receipts and here we go.

My beautiful fake Christmas tree cost per year from 2018-2025?

$49.87

If I would have kept it 15 years? $26.60. I’m not sure the cost per year for a real tree, so I’ll have to cross that bridge when we get a real Christmas tree for 2026! But perhaps the fake tree WASNT the right choice for someone who moves as much as we do!

I’ve always considered cost per year to be an interesting way of assessing the value of a consumer product – and I have to say, technically it would probably be more if I counted the space in the moving truck that it’s taken to haul it around for 8 years. Though I freely admit that’s a me moving too much problem, and not a most people problem. 99% of the time I am not calculating cost per year in my brain when I buy anything. Simple because I’m not built that way, I’m more free-spirited and chaotic. The fact I’ve remained consistent since 2021 with anything money related is a miracle.

As Marie Kondo would say though – thank you for your service Christmas tree. I have to say it’s a little emotional to let it go. It has served its purpose for 8 years, but now that we’re downsizing to a 1400 square foot house, I think it’s time to let it go. I hope that someone is just as excited as I used to be to use it. Though it doesn’t change the fact that the money is gone, it really does feel good to give away items that can be of use to someone else.