How to Make Storing Christmas Decorations Easy
Storing Christmas decorations may not be the most fun job, but with these 8 simple tips and hacks, you can get the job done with ease and be ready for the next holiday season! And who doesn’t want an easy way for that chore?! Keep reading for my quick tips, ideas, and resources!
It’s an amazing thing. On the days leading up to Christmas, I just can’t imagine feeling ready to take it all down. The Christmas season is just so fun and cozy and wonderful!
And every, single year, a few days after Christmas, I start getting the itch to take it down. I think it feels good to refresh and restyle. Then, I can get the hard work of organizing and getting Christmas decoration storage ideas for next year all done and over with!
I start getting excited about restyling and refreshing our home, making it extra cozy for the winter months. (Yes, even in South Florida we get some “cold” winter days!). Soon, I’ll be sharing more posts about making your home cozy for winter and how to decorate after Christmas.
In the meantime, you can find some simple and easy ideas HERE!
When should you put away your Christmas decorations?
In my humble opinion, this is totally up to you and I don’t think there is a right or wrong. Traditionally, Christmas decorations should be taken down on the 12th day. The date falls on January 5th or 6th (depending on whether you count Christmas Day as day 1 or not).
Realistically, that doesn’t work for all of us, though!
For our family, sometimes we take down the Christmas decor right after Christmas before leaving to travel over our winter break. However, other times the big Christmas take-down doesn’t happen until after New Year’s. Many years, we are still celebrating Christmas with extended family over the New Year’s holiday. I love to keep our home festive for all of that too!
Disclaimer: If I were home all the time, I would absolutely leave it all up until after New Year’s every year! Since I teach full time, it’s really important to me to try and set our family up for a successful and smooth transition back into the school routine. There is just something about coming home to a simplified, clean home, makes those first days back a lot easier!
What are the best ways to store Christmas decorations?
No matter when we take down our Christmas décor, though, being organized and intentional sets us up for an easier time when we take it all out again to do our holiday decorating the following year! In this post, I’m going to share some simple steps of the ways that work the best for our family when we are storing festive decorations.
That may look a little different for your family. However, hopefully it sparks some inspiration and motivation when you’re ready to get the job done for your home too!
Our family works together each year to get the décor taken down, organized, and stored away.
Storing Christmas decorations doesn’t have to be a terrible chore! Every year, a few more memories pack themselves into those totes and into our hearts!
We don’t have a fancy system or any revolutionary storage solutions for storing Christmas decorations. However, we do have practical methods and simple steps that we have worked hard to streamline over the past couple of years to make the task as easy and time-friendly as possible.
Any kind of storage and organization really depends a lot on the space and items you’re working with. I’ll share some general tips of Christmas decoration storage ideas that work for us! Then, you can tweak these ideas to work for your storage area and family needs too.
How to Make Storing Christmas Decorations Easy
What is the best way to store holiday decorations?
Step One for Storing Christmas Decorations: Gather decor into one central place.
First of all, gather all Christmas décor into one central place. Our long, farmhouse table works great. Next, organize décor into groupings of like items. On the other hand, if you like to do the same decor in each room, each year, you can also group items by the room they are used in.
I tend to mix mine up and use them differently, so grouping into like items works best for me!
If there is anything left in the Christmas bins that I didn’t use, I pull that out and either group it with like items or put it in a donate pile to get rid of.
This is the best time to declutter! Don’t bother taking up space and time to store things that you know you aren’t going to use anymore.
Step Two for Storing Christmas Decorations: Use this as a chance to declutter.
Which leads me to step two! Anything that you didn’t use this year or don’t want to keep, set aside into a donate pile! There is no reason to keep storing things you aren’t going to use and it helps minimize, at least a little bit, for when you start decorating the following year!
Storing Christmas decorations that you don’t want or need just takes up extra physical and mental space!
While you are already making a huge mess, it’s the best time to declutter and get rid of the broken, unused, unwanted items!
Step Three for Storing Christmas Decorations: Sort things into like items and use plastic bags.
Put small items into plastic bags to keep them together. For example, my miniature stockings, bottle brush trees, and small nutcrackers go into Ziplocs! Simple and easy! It’s a lot of plastic bags, but I recycle by using them year after year after year!
Plastic bags seal them as well as keeping them from getting all jumbled and tangled up. I also use a plastic bag for things like ornament or bell garlands, as well as little fairy lights. It is wonderful to not have a tangled mess when I get it all out to decorate again!
I take almost everything out of the original boxes or packaging and repack it. However, I do have a small collection of little Christmas village sets that I will put back in the original boxes to avoid potential damage. However, those boxes will then go into the appropriate plastic bin.
For my mercury glass or breakable ornament garlands, I use an ornament storage box. There are a lot of different options for an ornament storage container out there. THIS one is wonderful!
When storing Christmas decorations, I try to carefully think about anything that could make my job easier next year!!!
Step Four: Organize your decor to get ready to store it away into sturdy storage boxes.
Is it ok to store Christmas decorations in the garage?
Pack items into plastic containers instead of a cardboard box for the best storage in an attic or garage. After using many different ones over the years, we have found this style of storage bin to be the most durable. At the same time, they also stack easily and that helps keep our attic (a little more) organized! That is my husband’s favorite part about these. In fact, we use them for almost all of the storage in our attic. The same is true for a garage and sturdy plastic containers like these keep Christmas decorations safe and sound!
These plastic bins also come in different sizes. The small ones work perfectly for ornaments and delicate houses or Christmas village pieces, while the extra large ones hold my tabletop artificial Christmas trees, both medium and small tree options alike. A great solution is by packing those trees together, I’m able to keep them from getting smashed by heavier items!
How should I organize my Christmas decorations for storage?
Here are a few ways I sort and organize my holiday decorations:
- Greenery: Tabletop artificial Christmas trees, faux greenery garlands, and small wreaths
- Winter Decor: First, I set aside items I want to use throughout the season. These will all get put into one tote when I’m ready to start making some spring transitions in February. I’ll share more specifics in a later blog post, but I mainly set aside simple cedar garlands and natural looking trees. THESE realistic eucalyptus garlands are a good thing to use all year. They make a frequent appearance in my dining room for centerpieces in the spring and fall, as well as Christmas and winter.
Also, I like to keep out a few vintage ornaments to use in my New Year’s décor! You can find 15 super easy ways to decorate for New Year’s over on THIS POST. Don’t forget to leave a few Christmas lights out for some cozy vibes during the winter!
I also set aside smaller trees in various sizes. They are perfect for living room decor and vignettes on the coffee table or side tables. Larger trees are a good idea to keep out also. As long as they don’t have a specific Christmas theme, they look beautiful to tuck in a corner or in an entryway.
How do you store fragile Christmas decor?
- Fabric items and fragile items: For example, our Santa mugs get wrapped in bubble wrap and put into a storage bin with stockings, tree skirts, and Christmas pillow covers. Keeping fragile items with soft textiles offers extra protection and helps keep them from getting broken! You can also invest in storage containers like THIS that are designed for storing fragile pieces. It really depends on how much space you have for storage!
- Filler décor:In this tote, I have items such as nutcrackers, bells, fabric garlands, and little reindeer. These are all décor items that I will use next year after the trees are up, garlands hung, etc. When I get out the decor next year, I know I can save this tote for all the detail finishes.
- Brass: These all go in one tote together, even though it makes for a heavy tote! I keep all of my vintage French horns, angel and horn candlesticks, and reindeer in one separate tote. Then, I don’t have to worry about those items shuffling around in a tote and breaking or scratching other décor pieces.
How do you organize and store Christmas ornaments?
- Ornaments: I have one small tote for fragile Christmas tree ornaments. Those get wrapped in paper towels or leftover tissue paper. You can also recycle used wrapping paper from Christmas Day. I told you…we aren’t fancy! The best solutions really are usually quite simple! We put all of the other ornaments into two small totes. They are not breakable and can easily just all be put together. While there are many great ornament organizers out there, we have found that our ornaments are just too many different shapes and sizes to really work that way. Small totes are the right size and work a lot better for us!
- Last year, I added THIS STURDY ORGANIZER for my vintage, breakable ornaments. I added quite a bit to my collection and definitely want to keep these thrifted treasures in good shape to use in the future. This organizer is really sturdy and holds a lot of fragile ornaments. It is a great addition to our Christmas storage and organization resources!
- Wreaths: My big wreaths go into wreath bags. This keeps them in great condition!
How do you store outdoor Christmas decor?
- For the outdoor wreaths, I maximize the storage space by putting outdoor Christmas pillows in the middle of the wreath. This also helps the wreath keep their shape in all the shuffling around. I fold outdoor pillow covers and put them on top of my outdoor Christmas pillows in the wreath bag too.
Step Five: Label each tote.
Label each tote. We like to use this tape and a sharpie.
Since my décor is always changing and evolving, I don’t have to try and match up items into certain bins the following year!
I save myself a lot of frustration by being able to easily relabel totes as needed when storing Christmas decorations. My family is also able to help me better this way too.
Step Six for Storing Christmas Decorations: Use Christmas tree bags.
Big Christmas trees go into tree bags. We’ve tried a few different ones over the years, and have happily invested in heavy duty ones that protect our trees and can be used for several years. It actually saves us extra cost of having to replace them often!
I also combine my 4 foot artificial trees into one tree bag to consolidate things as we are storing Christmas decorations. The bags are easy to slide into the attic and patiently wait in the eaves of the house for next year’s Christmas decorating to roll around!
Step Seven: Ask for help!
This may seem like an odd tip, but it’s okay to ask for help! And it’s much better to all work together and get the job done well!
Grab some extra muscle to help you get your bins and bags into storage! It’s a big job, but so satisfying to know it’s all packed away neatly in a safe place and ready for you the following year.
Now that our kids are getting older, they are able to be a big help. Maybe it’s the teacher that comes out in me, but I think it is important for them to be involved in some of the work that goes behind all the Christmas magic too!
Some years, I have also paid a college student to pack up the Christmas decor while we spent time with family after the holiday. It has always been money well-spent to come home to a clean house!
Step Eight for Storing Christmas Decorations: Deep clean right away.
I give our home a good, deep cleaning.
If I can, I hire someone to do this part while we enjoy a family outing! It’s fun to come home, knowing that the now empty spaces are ready for me to start transitioning our décor.
Plus, it’s easy to clean when all the surfaces are cleared off and the bulky trees are gone! (Amazing what collects under those tree skirts! Yikes!)
After storing Christmas decorations fully away, our home is always ready for a super thorough cleaning. It also helps me start getting ready for some extra organizing in January. You can read more about how I organize my home decor on this post.
When all the Christmas decor is put away and all my surfaces are cleaned, it feels so good to have a completely blank (and clean!) canvas in front of me, especially as I start creating cozy spots (and reusing some of those faux trees!) all throughout our home to enjoy the rest of the winter.
What is the best way to store Christmas decorations?
As you can see, our process for storing Christmas decorations isn’t fancy, but it’s fairly efficient and I find this system to be the least overwhelming when it’s time to pull out Christmas décor the next year! We have found that the best ideas for us have been the simple ones that are feasible to maintain from year to year.
It’s important to know your space and lay out the best way to store your decor depending on how much room you have. Then, you can decide what tools, resources, and storage solutions can work the best for the space you have for storage. One thing that helps us is to spend time arranging our attic so that we have as easy access as possible to all of our seasonal decor.
It brings me great satisfaction to know my Christmas décor is neat and tidy, safely stored away, and ready to pull out and enjoy more wonderful memories next year! Next, I can start with a completely clean slate and truly refresh our home for the coziest winter!
I hope there are some helpful tips here for you or maybe even some inspiration to get the job done whenever you’re ready! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the present and a very Merry Christmas with your family and friends.
It brings me great satisfaction to know my Christmas décor is neat and tidy, safely stored away, and ready to pull out and enjoy more wonderful memories next year! Next, I can start with a completely clean slate and truly refresh our home for the coziest winter!
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Blessings,
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You are so organized! Great ideas!
So many great tips?
Great ideas! Similar to your ziplock bag idea, I use clear zippered bags that I have saved over the years from curtains, sheet sets, quilts, etc. Since they come in a variety of sizes, I have use them for sorting things like mini trees, non breakable ball ornaments, soft garlands, floral/greenery picks, and filler like pinecones and jingle bells. I try to do some decluttering both when I get out my decor and again when I put it away. Also, I try to take note of things I was short on and look for them when Christmas decor starts getting marked down so I have what I need next year. Thanks for sharing, and Happy New Year!
That’s amazing! Starting a list for next year is a game changer. I hope you have the best New Year!
Great tips, Robyn. Storage is always an issue because we have too much. I did purge and always looking for better solutions to help keep me organized.
Thank you! It always feels amazing to unload stuff we no longer need!
I love all these suggestions! Do you have a link for the Eucalyptus garland? I tried to click on it where it says THESE and it wasn’t a link. I’m invested and I think I totally need some!
Love reading all your posts.
Hi Heather!
You are so sweet! Thank you for your kind words. I fixed the link, but here it is as welL: Eucalyptus Garland
Blessings,
Robyn