Tidying Up

1/17/2014

I live in a mostly tidy neighborhood.  What does that mean exactly?  Here lawns are mowed regularly, bushes trimmed, leaves are picked up during the fall season.and sidewalks are shoveled when it snows.  And like in every neighborhood there are exceptions - there always is.  One of my biggest gripes is pushing, raking or sweeping your fallen leaves out onto the street and then just leave them there.  Why do people do that?  Do they think the "picking up fairy" is magically going to appear and take care of this little task for them?  Well guess what folks, the fairy's not coming, so do your neighbors a favor and grab your rake, get a leaf bag and pick up this little eyesore.  Perhaps it's the OCD side of me that finds these old, sodden leaves so annoying.  I'm unsure how these neighbors would react if I just went down the street with my leaf bag and picked up after them. 

I noticed in the paper today how many neighborhoods are annoyed by the Christmas decorations left up long after Christmas is over.  I do admit that I don't much care for the inflatable Santas, etc. that adorn some lawns, but to each his own.  I'm happy to see that for the most part the blow up decorations do seem to disappear quickly once the holidays have passed.  As for the grumbling that I read about in the paper over Christmas lights being left up, I like those lights.  I have always enjoyed Christmas lights and probably always will.  I have a string of small lights on my fireplace mantel and they get turned on every night when I watch television.  Would I leave them up on my house after Christmas?  No because I'm pretty sure that somebody would take offense.  Now if I lived out on acreage, I'd leave the lights up all year long - In my opinion they're pretty.

I did watch several weeks ago a show called something like Lighting Wars where several homes, the homeowners took their Christmas decorating seriously were on television.  These houses had not hundreds but thousands of lights (and sometimes they blinked on and off), animated animals, and anything else you could possibly think of to put in your yard or on the house.  Homes like this were really a disturbance to the neighbors and I can understand why.  But while I believe each to his own, I still think that you should be thoughtful of the people around you. 

When the boys were at home, Scott outlined the roof of our house and the porch posts and bushes with small lights and it was glorious to come home after work and see the house beautifully lit up.  Our rule was that the lights had to come down (weather permitting), or at the very least be turned off shortly after Christmas.  Scott has his own home now and I'm pretty sure that he hasn't abandoned his love of outdoor lights