How to Organize Holiday Decorations

From the miniature haunted house used as a dining room table centerpiece on Halloween to the plastic Easter eggs hung from all the front yard trees every spring, where do all decorations go when it’s not their turn? With a little thought and organization, you can keep the holiday decoration mania under control.

Things You'll Need

• Storage boxes
• Marker and labels
• Digital camera and computer (optional)

Instructions

1. Decide how much space you actually have to devote to decorations, plan your storage, and stick to your plan. Determine that for every new item you purchase, unless there is room still available in the Thanksgiving box, for example, you’ll get rid of one Thanksgiving item you already own.

2. Starting with the next holiday--be it New Year’s Day or the 4th of July--streamline your decorations before you begin packing them away. As you come across items you haven’t displayed for at least 2 years, pack them up and donate them to a thrift store or a charity sale.

3. What about all those handmade decorations the kids have made over the years? You don’t really display them anymore, but they’d be so hard to give up. Take nice digital photos of that deteriorating construction paper Santa and that once-adorable Valentine box and store the photos on the computer.

4. Use individual storage boxes or grocery cartons to store your decorations. You can also buy large plastic tubs for this purpose. Label each container clearly with the name of the holiday. Avoid using plastic bags (like garbage bags), as items can be more easily broken. Also, the plastic can sometimes cause items to deteriorate, and the bags can’t be stacked.

5. Wrap fragile items in tissue, paper towels or newspaper. On a piece of masking tape, clearly write the name of the wrapped item in permanent marker. (Write the name before you put it on the item to avoid having the ink seep through.) Extremely small items can be stored in empty paper towel tubes.

6. Clean and freshen all items before storage. For example, remove wax that’s dripped onto candle holders, wash and iron special table linens, and glue together broken ornaments you wish to keep.

7. At the top of each box, include an envelope that contains a list of all the items in the box and a photograph of how the items were last displayed.