‘Tis the time of the year to be inundated with holiday catalogs. We get so many of them with their shiny colors and magnetic quality I have to be careful where I stack them so no one is smothered by an avalanche of catalogs.

The biggest problem with them is I actually like them; although I don’t often buy things from them. My house would be full of stuff if Ibought all the stuff I thought I wanted in those catalogs, which would then create a different kind of danger. But I look through them anyway.

When I peruse a catalog I make a mental list of all the stuff I want to buy. There are tons of handy gadgets I could buy but would probably never use; especially kitchen gadgets. I love kitchen gadgets, but I’ve made a rule for myself that I have to actually know where I’m going to put an item before I buy it.

Who wouldn’t want poach egg baskets for the perfect poached egg every time? Or cow clips to keep my chips from getting stale and my rice from spilling? Or a chicken or pig spoon holder? I mean the possibilities are endless and that was just one page!

By then end of the catalog, I’m so over stimulated by all the bright colors and useful items I just end up tossing it. You can get adevice to create a trivet out of corks or a metal Christmas tree (the ultimate fake tree).

And the toys! Where were those toys when my kids were small? I would have… I mean they would have had so much fun with those: a Perplexus Epic ball (I don’t know what it is either, but does it matter?), remote control bumper cars, or a ceramic hot dog ornament that opens (maybe I can put a hot dog in it?)! And look, for my husband I could get him a Pillow Tie. It’s a little pillow he could hide in his tie when he needs to rest his head on his desk at work (oh, my husband doesn’t wear ties and no, I’m not kidding, it’s real).

I’m sure you can see why I get over stimulated. What happens after the first review is I go back through the catalog and nothing is as bright and pretty the second time around. I start to notice the price and the size, and then it pretty much dulls the idea of the object.

That’s about the time I feel too over stimulated to make a decision and toss the catalog.Then I move onto the next catalog. Perusing a second one goes much quicker, because I’m pretty sure by that time I’m not going to buy anything. By the third one, I don’t go through it a second time. And by the fourth one I’m just tearing off the labels while tossing them,trying to dig out the kitchen table so we can eat dinner around it that night.

But I still like them. This time of year I get enough Christmas catalogs in a day I can afford to toss a few without even looking at them. I know I’ll have more the next day when I’ll be reinvigorated to start the process all over. Plus, I can’t keep them, I’d have a room full by the end of the season and then they’d be out of date before I could get to them all.

I try to only look through Christmas catalogs when someone else is in the house. If I did it when everyone was gone to work or school,I’m afraid they’d find me comatose by the time they got home.

I’d be sitting among of a pile of catalogs rocking and swaying and groaning. They’d have to wrench them out of my cold, paralyzed hands.So you can see it’s a dangerous activity looking through holiday catalogs. It’s best to have someone available in case it all gets to be too much. Or if, heaven forbid, I actually suffer death by too many holiday catalogs.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. She is committed to writing about the humor amidst the chaos of a family. Youcan read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com.