A sparkly Christmas tree, twinkle lights all aglow… it’s such a lovely sight to behold once your holiday decorations are displayed around your home, but how much of a hassle was it to get to that point? These five tips for organizing your holiday decorations will have you all set for decking the halls next year without the stress, storage woes or tinsel tangles!
Keep your home from overflowing as you add holiday decor by packing up your year-round decorative items to make more space for seasonal items. Use the holiday bins, bags, and totes you’re unloading as you decorate as a temporary storage spot for your everyday home accents that can currently be stowed away. You’ll enjoy your holiday decor more if it has room to be on display in a meaningful way versus adding clutter to your home.
Tip #1: Use holiday bins to temporarily store non-holiday home accents.
When packing up your holiday decor, keep similar items grouped together. How you choose to do this will vary by how much holiday decor you have. For example, if you can fit all of your holiday decor in one tote, that’s great! Just be sure to keep that tote designated as your December holiday tote and don’t let things like your Halloween garland or Easter eggs sneak in there. It’ll make them easier to unpack next year.
Tip #2: Pack like items together.
If your holiday decor requires multiple bins or totes to be safely tucked away 11 months out of the year, give thought to how your items should be grouped together. Some years I like to decorate with a lot of gold, some years I like to decorate with a lot of color, and some years I like to combine the two. Because of this, I keep all of our gold ornaments, garlands, and bows in one bin, and all of our colorful ornaments, garlands, and bows in a separate bin. I also have separate bins for holiday home accents (decorative knick knacks, pillows, hand towels, stockings, etc.), and additional bins for wreaths and other greenery.
Tip #3: Keep strands of lights, garlands and beads organized using pieces of cardboard!
Simply cut a rectangular shape of cardboard from a box and snip a notch at one end. Tuck one end of your garland or strand of lights into the notch and then wrap the strand around the cardboard. When you reach the other end of your strand you can either tuck it into the same notch that you started with or snip a new notch at the other end to secure.
Next year when you grab your holiday lights and garland you’ll know exactly where the ends are and there won’t be any tangles or knots to undo!
Tip #4: If you have an artificial Christmas tree invest in a Christmas tree storage bag.
I’ll admit, I was a hold out on this one. For years I’d been trying to store our Christmas tree in its original box, thinking those storage bags were a waste of money. Of course, I can never get my tree down to it’s packaged size so the original box would never close, and after all of the pushing, pulling and shoving that’s required to attempt to store it this way my box had multiple rips, making it even more burdensome to manage. I finally purchased a Christmas tree storage bag during an after holiday clearance sale, and it’s been a game changer. Now packing up my tree is easier than ever! I can place all of the pieces of my tree in the storage bag, and there’s even room to toss in my tree skirt and digital timer for my tree lights, keeping everything safely together and organized. The handles on the storage bag make it much easier to carry to and from its storage space, and the bigger bags even have rollers at one end for easier transport.
Tip #5: Label everything!
After all of this work organizing your holiday decorations be sure to easily find what you’re looking for next year by clearly and thoroughly labeling all of your holiday bins and totes. I recommend labeling your bins and totes on two adjacent sides (versus on top) so you can see the label even when your bins are stacked, regardless of which direction they’re stacked.
These 5 holiday organization tips will have you well on your way to headache-free holiday decorating for years to come.
Dusty Rogers is the blogger, mother, maker, decorator and drinker of the wine at All Things G&D - a lifestyle blog where home décor, DIY and organization, healthy meals and kid-friendly snacks, party planning and entertaining all happily play together in the sandbox. Dusty lives in Madison, WI with her husband Greg and their daughter Kate, and she spends her days balancing high maintenance tendencies with a desire to keep things simple.
