The worst part about the holidays is having to pack up all the magical decor when the festivities are over! I’d leave Christmas decor up all year if I could, but you have to make room to decorate for New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, etc. So once the holidays are over, here are some great tips for packing up and storing your holiday decor!
Ornaments
Ornaments are a little tricky to store because they are often fragile and need to be cushioned as well as efficiently packed away. Luckily there are lots of tricks you can use to protect, cushion, and separate your ornaments when you store them!
You can find commercially available ornament storage boxes with layers of cushioned dividers to protect your ornaments, or in a pinch you can quickly create your own! Attach plastic cups to a piece of cardboard with a hot glue gun, place the cardboard in a plastic storage bin, and you have your very own DIY ornament box!
You can also reuse egg cartons to store small, fragile ornaments. The individual cartons help separate and protect your smaller ornaments.
And remember, always wrap your ornaments in tissue paper to protect them, no matter how you store them!
Lights
Storing Christmas lights can be tricky; they tend to get tangled no matter how careful you are! The best plan for keeping your lights untangled is to put them away the same way they came packaged. If you buy a new box of lights, pay attention to how they’re packaged when you unpack them, and if you can, put them back the same way. So hold onto those twist ties!
If your lights are a few years old and already tangled, another trick is to gently wrap them around a piece of cardboard. This will keep them untangled as you store them year to year, and allow you to store them flat, saving you some space.
Wreaths
Wreaths are difficult to store because they’re usually large and delicate, but you have a few options. If you can find a hat box big enough, it will be perfect for protecting your wreath in storage. There are also commercially available hard plastic wreath boxes.
Another option is to hang your wreaths to store them. Attach a few large hooks to a wall and you can hang all of your wreaths together in one place. This is a great solution if you store holiday decor in a garage or basement and have extra wall space. Or if you store your holiday decor in a closet, hang your wreaths at the back of the closet instead.
Gift Wrap Supplies
Use the back of a closet door to store your gift wrap supplies; your gift wrapping supplies will always be readily available for holidays, birthdays, etc. and they won’t take up any extra space!
String wire between two eyelet screws about four feet up from the bottom of your door, and use shower curtain clips to hang rolls of wrapping paper on the wire.
Keep rolls of wrapping paper from unrolling by slicing an empty toilet paper tube lengthwise and slipping it around the roll. It’s easily removable when you need to use the paper, and it makes sure your rolls stay tightly rolled!
Hang a skinny dowel on the back of the door for your ribbon. Thread the dowel through the center of your spools of ribbon and your ribbon will hang neatly in a row until you need it! Or if you don’t want to hang your ribbon, find an empty shoe box and poke small holes in it every inch or so. Place the spools of ribbon in the box, thread the end out through the holes. This DIY ribbon dispenser will keep your ribbon from unwinding when you’re not using it!
Hooks, Hangers, Extra Lights, etc.
All of the extra bits and pieces are probably the most important part of any holiday decor! There’s nothing worse than having a whole string of lights go out because of one bad bulb, and having no idea where you put the extra bulbs last year! A great way to store all of these extra pieces is in a thread or bead organizer box. These little plastic boxes are only a few bucks, and some come with movable dividers, so you can customize your storage to fit whatever you need!
And remember, no matter how you store your holiday decor each year, make sure to label everything well so that you can easily find it again next year!
