Why I Have Eight Christmas Trees (Without Making Home Feel Like a Shop)

I don't think having several Christmas trees means you need to create eight miniature versions of the same tree. In fact, I prefer not to.

Some of ours aren't decorated with ornaments at all. The three alpine trees by the record player, for example, are covered in artificial snow and have lights, but that's it. I put little logs around the bottom and create something that feels a little like a snowy Alpine corner.

They don't need baubles.

Our bedroom tree is small and simple too. Just little lights and some miniature ornaments. It's there because I like walking into the bedroom and finding a little bit of Christmas there.

Outside is different again. The enormous white tree underneath the covered terrace can be colourful and playful. Its lights can be changed into all sorts of colours and patterns.

Not every Christmas tree needs to perform the same job. Some are there to tell a story. Some are simply there to make a corner glow.

With multiple Christmas trees, this is probably the part that matters most. I want Christmas everywhere. I don't want every room to feel as though it belongs to a different Christmas catalogue.

Inside the house, I use a lot of gold tones because they already work beautifully with our interior. There is enough repetition between the trees and the rest of the decorations that everything belongs together, without needing to match exactly.

Lighting helps enormously too. Our Christmas lights are Philips Hue, so the lighting throughout the house can feel cohesive even when the trees themselves are different.

That's probably my biggest practical lesson from decorating with multiple Christmas trees: repeat an atmosphere, not necessarily a decorating scheme.

A colour can return. A type of light can return. Materials can relate to each other. But every tree doesn't need the same ribbon, same ornaments and same perfectly distributed baubles. In our house, that would rather defeat the point.

Then there is the main tree. This one is different. It's the largest tree inside the house, standing around 2.30 metres tall in the sitting area, and it's the tree I spend the most time decorating.

It has Hue lighting and plenty of gold, but after that the decorating rules become considerably less serious.

Prince is in there. So is coffee. Coca-Cola. A bag of crisps. Nijntje. There are ornaments from a collaboration with Starbucks. Decorations we've brought home from the Cotswolds. And whenever we're travelling and I find a Christmas ornament I really love, there's a good chance it will eventually end up here.

I also have quite a collection from Vondels. Which means our Christmas tree contains, among other things, a frikandel speciaal, a bitterbal, a kroket and a bag of chips.

Elegant? Debatable. Do I love it? Completely.

I think this is where people sometimes make Christmas decorating unnecessarily difficult. There is so much inspiration showing beautifully coordinated Christmas trees where every ornament belongs to exactly the same palette. I love a beautiful tree too. But I don't think beautiful has to mean anonymous.

Our main tree is busy. Christmas is allowed to be busy. Every year we add things to it that make us laugh, remind us of somewhere we've been or simply represent something we like. Over time, that has made decorating it much more enjoyable.

You're not just filling branches. You're finding things again. A decoration from a trip. Something silly you bought because it made you laugh. An ornament you had forgotten about until you opened the box again.

The tree has become a collection of us. And I would choose that over a perfectly coordinated tree with no connection to our life every time.

If you're considering more than one Christmas tree, I wouldn't start by deciding how many you need. That's how you accidentally end up with eight.

Instead, look at the places where a tree would genuinely change how the house feels. The one by our front door makes arriving home feel festive before we've even stepped inside. The bedroom tree is tiny, but I see it at the beginning and end of the day. The alpine trees create their own little winter scene. The outdoor trees mean that when I look through the windows, Christmas doesn't suddenly stop at the glass. And the big living-room tree is the heart of it all.

This also means you don't need eight fully decorated trees. A little tree with warm lights can be enough. In fact, I think the undecorated ones help give the house breathing room around the busier ones.

Another thing I've learned: I don't try to turn the entire house into Christmas in one heroic Saturday. The trees go up over several days.

Bas helps when I need him - particularly with assembling the big tree - and he usually puts up the outdoor tree. The rest of the Christmas empire is largely left to me. Which suits us both perfectly.

Spreading it out also means I get to enjoy the decorating rather than treating it as a job to complete. Music goes on. Boxes come down from the attic. One corner changes, then another. That's part of the anticipation for me. I don't want to rush through the bit I've spent months looking forward to.

There is another side to loving Christmas this much. When I'm finished with it, I'm finished. Usually two or three days after New Year's Day, everything comes down. All eight trees.

The ornaments go back into their boxes. The decorations return to the attic. And then I clean the house from top to bottom. I usually have some time off then, so I can really do it properly. And I love that feeling almost as much.

After weeks of Christmas everywhere, suddenly the house feels enormous again. Clean. Quiet. Fresh. It feels tidy in my head too. Christmas gives way to a new-year refresh, and I'm ready for it.

Perhaps that's another reason I don't mind going quite so far in November and December. It isn't permanent. For a few weeks, our home gets to be completely, unapologetically Christmas. Then it becomes something else again.