How to Store Christmas Decorations

When Twelfth Night rolls around, put on your favorite album of carols for one last listen, pour a final glass of eggnog and put your ornaments and other Christmas decorations to bed for another year.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Christmas Tree Ornaments
• Cardboard Boxes
• Ornament Storage Boxes
• Felt-tip Pens
• Cardboard boxes

1. Get out all the boxes you've saved, and set them on a coffee table or other surface (not on the floor - someone will smash them). If any are torn or splitting at the seams, mend them with tape. Find a few other boxes you can press into service. Old shoe or boot boxes are perfect and are an easy size to store.

2. Gather some wrapping material - tissue paper is perfect.

3. Take the ornaments off the tree. Put any that fit into their original boxes away first - those glass balls that fit so nicely into six-packs, for example. Lay the others out in a safe place.

4. Sort the remaining ornaments by size, weight and fragility. Sturdy wood and plastic ornaments will be fine in a box nestled into tissue paper or an old towel, with layers going from heavy to light. Fragile ornaments should be wrapped individually and put in a separate, marked box. Anything that is particularly fragile or precious should be wrapped in tissue paper and be put in its own small box and then be placed inside the larger box with the other fragile ornaments.

5. Place anything that might deteriorate - children's dough ornaments, for example - in a separate box. No matter how carefully you wrap them, there's a chance they'll fall apart - and you don't want crumbs all over your beautiful handmade pieces.

6. Wind strands of lights neatly. Hold the plug in one hand with your arm bent in an "L" shape, and with the other hand, loop the strand down around your elbow and up between your thumb and forefinger. Do the same with garland that is worth saving. Place these on top of ornaments, if they fit, or in a separate box.

7. Wrap candles that are worth saving in tissue, and put them in their own box - just in case. Store in a cool place.

8. Check wreaths and other decorations to see what they're made of and what shape they're in. Anything made of fresh materials - a flower or chili-pepper wreath, for example - will not store well (these are really one-time decorations). A dried wreath may be stored carefully in a cardboard box.

9. Tape the boxes closed, and store them with the labels out. The top shelf of a closet or a corner of the basement or attic is perfect - somewhere they can sit undisturbed until next year.

Tips & Warnings

• To preserve dough ornaments that are not already varnished, dry them for an hour or so in a low-heated oven (they'll have absorbed some ambient moisture from the air during the weeks they've hung on the tree). Then, spray them with a fixative - polyurethane varnish, for example. Allow the finish to dry, and then wrap them well in plastic wrap.

• Store all Christmas supplies in the same general area, but mark the boxes carefully - "nativity set," "outdoor lights," "indoor lights" - so that when you go to decorate next year it will be easier to pick and choose. (If you've finally talked your children into not putting a big Rudolph on the front lawn, why get him out and remind them?)

• Make sure the area of the attic or basement in which you store the decorations is not prone to water leaks.