It is a clean slate.  A promise of another way of being.  Gone are the nicks and scrapes of the previous year--the soul healed and unblemished again after a long, restful break.

The holiday decorations have been taken down: a homey task that would seem anticlimactic after weeks of festivities, but in all actuality is a cathartic ritual of putting one year to rest while welcoming another. 

The house feels quiet, clean, spacious after the last of the pine needles have been vacuumed up and any leftover ribbons and tissue paper are folded away for the next year.  Sometimes you still find traces of the holiday like a stray festive card sitting on your bookshelf or a forgotten bauble resting on your writing table.  Those too are soft reminders of the coming new year.

You tuck them away in storage and marvel at how fresh your home feels, how decadent it is to sit on the couch and knit and have nothing pressing to do.  In a little bit you might walk to the refrigerator and rummage around for something to eat for lunch, but only if it isn't too much trouble. 

For now, you sit and knit, trying to stretch out the freshness, the newness, the unblemished glory of another new year before some adventure or another lures you out of your home and the whole thing begins again.