The great debate is on— real vs. faux Christmas trees. Which one has your vote?!
I used to be a real Christmas tree only kind of gal, until this year. Now I’m leaning towards being a faux Christmas tree gal, but before I decorated the tree the verdict was still out on which one I was.
A little bit of background on how this real vs. faux Christmas trees post came to be and why I switched to a faux Christmas tree this year.
1. Our apartment has an elevator that we needed to use to get the tree up and down. Getting the tree up the elevator wasn’t that big of an issue. By the time the tree was 30+ days old and we dragged it out of the apartment and through the elevator, there were pine needles everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE! To paint you a visual, there wasn’t much left on this poor dead and dry tree by the time it was being pulled out of the elevator. SO ANNOYING, right? The pine needles obviously needed to be cleaned from the inside of the apartment through the elevator and into the parking garage. When all was said and done, it took hours between bringing the tree in and disposing of it plus the cleanup.
2. Half way through December I started noticing my allergies acting up. If there are two months of the year I can count of my allergies cooling it, it’s December and January. So what gives??? Well, when Ryan started having allergenic symptoms we realized it was probably the tree. As the tree started dying, our allergies got worse (mine especially). We could barely even sit by the tree the last week of December.
3. Lily LOVES to eat and gnaw on the branches. It sounds cute, and really was, but I assume with how much of it she was eating that it couldn’t have been the best for her.
4. Watering it…..why is it such a pain to water a tree?! I literally would get water everywhere.
5. No matter what we did, we could never get the tree straight. That drove both of us CRAZY!!!
Flash forward to this year, and me thinking about a faux tree. Now, I will admit…pulling the trigger on a fake tree was HARD!!! It took me forever to decide on what type of tree I wanted (who knew there were so many faux tree options?!). Even when I opened the box I still wasn’t 100% sure of this faux tree choice. In fact, I even almost packed the tree back up and sent it back. I decided to give it a solid go and put the tree together and did some serious fluffing. I also tried to keep in mind the reasons why we were even trying a faux tree.
How do I feel now that the faux tree is up and decorated??? Well, I kind of LOVE it! While I do miss the smell, that’s about all I miss. Below I’ve listed my pros and cons to real vs. faux trees based on my personal experience with both.
Real vs. Faux Christmas Trees
<<Faux Christmas Trees>>
Pros for a Faux Tree
- NO MESS!!! This was the main deciding factor to try the faux tree
- You don’t have to remember to water it
- More cost effective…you only pay for the tree once and use it for many years after
- No allergies
- It’s easy to make them straight
- They are easy to decorate because you can manipulate the branches the way you need them to be for certain ornaments
- Can be left up for longer than a real tree
- They actually look kind of ‘perfect’ when decorated
- Your furry friends won’t make a mess out of it
Cons for a Faux Christmas Tree
- You have to find somewhere to store it every year
- It doesn’t have the sensational scent of a real Christmas tree
- Can look a little too fake
- The fluffing of the branches…..2 long hours later and my tree was finally fluffed
<<Real Christmas Trees>>
Pros for a Real Christmas Tree
- The smell
- The memories and traditions of going to pick out your tree every year
- They help local economies (the tree farmers, the people manning the lots, etc)
Cons for a Real Christmas Tree
- The mess….lord have mercy, I’m still finding pine needles from last year
- The allergies created from the tree
- That you have to water it
- That it has a short life span
- It never seems to be straight….or maybe that’s just mine and Ryans problem
- It can be hard to ‘perfectly’ decorate based on it’s branch locations
- Higher prices this year due to a Christmas tree shortage nation wide
So which one has your vote in the real vs. faux christmas trees debate?! I’d love to know!!
