This year I am focusing on simplifying my life and sharing those tips and tricks with you, and since I’ve been dragging my feet on taking my Christmas decor down, I’d thought I’d start there. Today I’m sharing with you some simple tips to help you safely store and organize your seasonal decor so that decorating is easier next year!
Just imagine when the Christmas season comes around again in 12 short months. How thankful will you be if you actually take the time this season to organize all that “stuff” and store in such a way that makes decorating a breeze next year. I know you’ll love these simple ideas, so let’s get to it!
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How I Organize Our Christmas Decor & Prepare For Next Year
I get very sad every year when it’s time to take the Christmas decorations down. I wish Christmas lasted a bit longer, you know what I mean? Because I’m so depressed about it, I tended to just tear it down without a care in the world just to have my house less cluttered. However, this method was wreaking havoc the next year when I’d try to decorate but would find my tinsel literally in a tangle.
So, here are my simple tips and tricks to storing and organizing Christmas/Seasonal decor so that you can put Christmas up and tear it down quickly and easily.
Store Decor In Labeled Plastic Storage Bins
We like to go to Target or Home Depot at the end of any holiday season and stock up on coordinating colored bins to store seasonal decor in. For Christmas we have red and green bins, for Halloween black, purple, and orange. You get the picture. We like to buy these bins on clearance.
You can use a label maker to label each bin with what’s inside, or by room (which I’ll talk about in a minute), so that’s it’s easy to find your decor next year. You’d be surprised how much you forget from year to year. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened a bin from last year and marveled at the new decor pieces we bought or how many leftover cards we have.
Another pro-tip is to buy clear plastic bins instead of the solid colors so that you can see what’s in each bin without opening them. This comes in handy if you are looking for a particular piece and don’t want to haul the entire bin upstairs.
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Organize Bins By Room
I like to organize our seasonal bins by room, that way I can quickly and easily unpack the decor and have a room complete in no time. It saves me from having to sort and search each bin for what I’m looking for. To me it feels more organized this way.
So, our bins are labeled “Kitchen Decor”, “Mantle Decor”, “Living Room Decor”, etc. In the future I hope to have bins for our bathrooms and bedrooms, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet. We still need to expand our seasonal decor if you know what I mean. Cha Ching!
We also have a bin labeled “fragile” that’s filled with our sentimental trinkets that we’ve inherited over the years. It has Adam’s Santa Bear musical plane that he loved when he was a kid, our family’s nativity scene, and my aunt’s ceramic Christmas tree with the multi-colored lights that we enjoy every year. These lovelies we find a new home for every year, so they don’t go into a particular room box.
Store Christmas Light Strands In Separate Bags
When it comes to Christmas lights, I like to store ours strand by strand in plastic grocery bags. This makes them easy to tuck in the Christmas tree bag, in bins with a little extra room, or in the bins that house our ornaments throughout the year.
You can buy a fancy light holder, but we’ve found that they don’t tangle and do just fine stuffed into bags. Plus, it puts those plastic bags to good use.
Pack Ornaments In Specialty Boxes Surrounded By Tissue Paper &/or Plastic Bags
Both of our families bought us ornaments every year of our life, and then when we started dating Adam started that tradition with us and we exchanged an ornament with each other as well. So, needless to say, we have a lot of ornaments!
Each year after Christmas has passed, these ornaments get neatly tucked into special ornament bins. The really fragile, sentimental ornaments are wrapped in leftover bubble wrap or tissue paper to protect them. We look forward to pulling them out year and year and reliving memories. We tend to buy ornaments on every vacation and for every special event. Our Christmas tree is like a living scrapbook of our lives, and we love that! It’s filled with dinosaurs, ballerinas, Hallmark Keepsake ornaments, and more!
The really sentimental ornaments, like our Lenox bride and groom ornament that we received the year we were married or the cute little porcelain house that we bought when we first moved in, I pack in their original boxes. Having the majority of the ornaments out of their boxes makes decorating the tree that much easier and quicker. And, as long as we wrap the delicate ones, we don’t have any breakage come the next year…knock on wood!
Write Reminder Notes To Yourself For Next Year
It’s a nice idea to tuck a note to yourself for next year in one of your bins. You can include reminders for things you need to buy, new things you’ve purchased, recipes you enjoyed from this year, etc. For instance, this year I will include in my note to buy more gingerbread house candy pieces since we used them all this year.
Buy Christmas Decor On Clearance & Save For Next Year
I have this thing for Pottery Barn every year at Christmastime. I literally want. it. all. End of story. So, this year, I decided to bit the bullet and buy some of my must-haves as the season came to a close and everything was on clearance. Now, I can’t wait until next when I can create a beautiful place setting with my nostalgic Santa plates I’ve wanted for about hundred years, and make our couches extra cozy with my new Christmas pillow covers I got at a fraction of the original price.
How fun is it to open your bins and discover all of the new things you bought with the next holiday season in mind. This makes decorating from year to year even more enjoyable. Plus, you save money in buying late in the season and saving for next year.
Donate The Items You Don’t Love Anymore
As you are packing things away for next year, take a look at what didn’t make it out of the bins. Do you love those items anymore? Do you have a place for them? Perhaps it’s time to donate them or give them away to another home that will enjoy them.
If you have pieces, like I do, that you can’t part with just yet perhaps buy a new bin to store these items in. Then you can revisit them from year to year and see if you have a need for them or not. Once that bin of questionable decor fills up, you know it’s time to purge.
These are quick and simple tips for organizing your Christmas/Seasonal decor so that decorating is a breeze next year. What tip did you find most helpful? Do you have a tip to share? Leave it in the comments below, I’d love to hear it!
2 Comments
This is a great post. I just took down my stuff today and I felt so uninspired by my storage situation. I liked all your tips!
I’m so glad you like these tips, Ginny. I absolutely hate taking down the Christmas decorations, but love storage solutions! So this makes it a little more enjoyable to be organized and make things easier for next year.