Happy January!

The hard part of my holiday was saying good-bye to my Christmas decorations.  After everything is put away, it’s time to deep clean and redecorate.  In my opinion, changing things around, moving a piece from one room to the other will give your home a little boost of change.

If I had to tell you only one thing about storing your Christmas decorations it would be a VERY strong tip…. invest in storage bins.  I purchased mine a long time ago, green and red bins to store my Christmas decorations and clear bins for all of my ornaments.  You spend a lot of money on your decorations and are very sentimental to you, placing them in a bin helps to prevent mishaps.  I double secure my decorations by wrapping things with plastic bags or bubble wrap.

Tip:  I would recommend getting the type of bins that have the latch handles.  This helps to keep the lid from popping off.

 

Where to start….

…looking at the whole picture is just too overwhelming, when I am faced with a big task, it helps if I break it down into smaller, more manageable parts. By breaking it up into smaller tasks, the work is more manageable and less intimidating.

How to store your Christmas decorations

Let me share with you the steps I take to break down my Christmas decorations and to show you how I pack it all up to store.

• Starting with my Christmas trees.

I take the decorations off the opposite way of putting them on.  I take all the ornaments off, picks, ribbon and then the twinkle lights.  I do this to all of my Christmas trees.

I store the ornaments by color in clear bins.  I like to use clear because I can see what color ornaments, without having to open the lid.  I didn’t buy the storage bins all at once, I bought them each year as I needed them.

Once I have all the decorations off the tree, I separate the ornaments into colors, I put the picks together and stems all together, roll up the ribbon (I use a straight pin to secure the ends of the ribbon) and remove the twinkle lights from the center of the tree.  I roll the strand of lights up.  I take apart the tree and place it in the box or storage bag.

TIP:  Remove the hook from the ornament before placing them into their storage container.  Place the hooks in a separate container with a lid and place them with your ornaments or store them in another place to grab when you are ready to use next year.  In years past I would keep the hooks on the ornaments and place them in the storage bin, but most of the hooks would fall off and I would have to dig to the bottom to try to find the hooks.  Keeping them in their own container makes it easier to grab a hook and place on the ornaments without having to find the hooks or going out and buying more.

I place all the ornaments in their color bin.  I know this is a lot of ornaments for one person’s home.  I like to store by color because I like to switch up my color decor each year and it is easier to pull out the bin I want to use.

I compress the picks for storing and place them in a clear bin.

After I compressed the picks, they all fit.

I place all my flower stems and Christmas tree toppers in a clear storage container.  I also compress the stems.  I turn the flowers that will not compress upside down and placed them on top so the center will not get damaged.

In one of our spare bedrooms, I have a chest of drawers.  I place all my ribbons in two of the drawers.  •Update• I now store my ribbons in a large tub.

I placed all of the hooks in a small container.

I remove the twinkle lights that I added to the center of the trees.  I roll them up nicely and place them in a smaller bin that I label “Twinkle Lights”.

I take the trees and place them in their storage place.  (The smaller trees are placed in their boxes and the larger trees I place in tree bags).

Now, I gather all of the Christmas decor.  I place everything in category piles.  Example:  All of my deer will be placed together, all of my Santa’s together…. etc.  I label the bin for the grouping that I place in it.  The reason that I don’t store them by rooms is because I might not put the same decorations in the same place as the years past.  I like to change things up each year.  For the rooms that I decorate based on the color of the room I will store those decorations together and label the bin for that room.

All my garlands, I remove the lights and any decorations and place the garland and lights in their own bin.

All my frames I place under a bed in one of our spare bedrooms.  I don’t like to store them with the rest of my decorations in the attic.

My Christmas florals I keep up on a shelf in one of the craft room closet.

All my Christmas candles I keep in a large floor trunk in the craft room.

TIP:  Never place candles in the bin with your other decorations if stored in a non-climate-controlled area.

 

All my bedding I keep on a shelf in one of our guest bedroom’s closet.

With all my Christmas wreaths, I remove all the ribbon and decorations and place in a large bin.  My outdoor wreaths I keep decorated and hang each up in our attic with a long nail on rafters.

I place most of my Christmas decorations up in our attic.  The portion I store my items is above our 3-car garage.  We had flooring installed when we built our home, I guess you can call this my woman cave.  Since it is all my items.

Starting with all of our Christmas trees I place them on the floor.

Our attic has lighting, but for some reason my camera did not want to focus up there for the below photos.  Sorry in advance!

I stack the ornaments, picks and stems in front of the trees. (The pick’s bin and stem’s bin is not shown here.  I sat those two bins on top of one of the ornament’s bins after picture was taken).

I stack the Christmas decor bins as best as I could in front of the ornament bins.  With the rafters it is hard to place them neatly.  I have a total of 22 Christmas bins and 16 clear bins and 7 Christmas trees.  Plus, a lot of individual items that I don’t place in storage bins.  I am sure you would say I have too much, but I love Christmas and Christmas decorations.

I can happily say that all of my Christmas decorations are nicely put away.   This is how I organize and store my Christmas decorations.  The organization works well for me.  Do you have a certain way you store your decorations?  I would love to hear different ways on your storing process.  I always have room for improvement.

Now it is time to deep clean each room and put the rooms back together.

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Stay strong and stay blessed!

Terrie