Storing Christmas Decorations: Works for Me Wednesday

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

I love Christmas. It's my favorite holiday. But I dread decorating because of how much stuff I have and how long it takes me to set up and take down. I used to spend hours putting everything away. It took me a few years, but I finally figured out a storage system that works for me.


I have several tubs for storing my Christmas stuff but they were a jumbled and chaotic mess. Every year I'd start decorating and it looked like Santa's Workshop exploded in my living room. Last year I reached my limit. My anal side couldn't take it anymore. I spread everything out, grouped like items and started labeling.

It took me hours but it was totally worth it. This year, I was able to find exactly what I wanted and didn't need to open some of the bins at all. I grouped all the like items together into their own tote. All the tree decorations are together; my cards, bows and gift wrap are together, etc.


Each tub has pieces of masking tape with an item written on each piece. If I rearrange or get rid of something it's easy to pull off the tape.

Things are labeled within the totes, too. Before the reorganization, I had a ton of tiny gift bags scattered between the bins. Now they are all in a 2-gallon zipper bag in the gift wrap tote. I also had a lot of little things, like tape or treat bags, that would get lost in the totes. I now have two gift wrap cutters and enough pop up tape to last me another four Christmases because I thought I didn't have any and bought more only to find them when I started wrapping. Now, I have another giant zipper bag with a label taped to the inside with all the contents listed.



My sanity has been restored! I don't have to dread the decorating process anymore. Now that I'm organized I can spread it out over a few days.

Do you have a storage system for decorations? Please spill in case I can be even more organized!

1 comment:

  1. I'm sure you had some very good ideas here but after I read "My anal side..." I was completely unable to focus on anything but "That's what she said." I'm not sure what that says about me, but there you have it.

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