Easy Tips To Organize Your Holiday Decor

Easy Tips To Organize Your Holiday Decor this holiday Season.

Today on Ask The Designer I am covering one of my most asked questions, How do Organize All of Your Holiday Decor? I will say this is a look into an area of my home that I usually do not show very often since it is what I like to consider “back of the house” and it clearly is more of a storage area. So excuse the lighting or lack thereof, and the fact that the space is also unfinished.  I like to think of this as money saved on a storage unit, if you figure a conditioned storage unit would cost on the low end around $200 a month this space saves me $2,400 a year, plus travel, and time. Here are a few of my Easy Tips To Organize Your Holiday Decor:

Label Each Holiday into Specific Bins

My area has specific bins for Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and Fourth of July. I also have a few seasonal cross over bins like Spring, Summer and Fall; with items that are more universal and specific to a holiday. Below you can see a section of my Christmas decor, which I like to keep in red totes for easy visibility at a glance. I know exactly what I am looking at, then I label accordingly to specific areas of my home. You can see I just used basic duct tape and sharpie, nothing fancy, just a removable label so I can easily change it, when needed.

Try Color Sorting Like Items Together

Consider storing bulk ornaments or greenery picks.  This way it is easy to find what you are looking for quickly. You can even do this with your ribbon as well. I have totes of all silver decor or all white decor, so when I am decorating in a specific color or theme I can easily locate all of the like items at one time. The tote below is all silver, which includes ornaments, ribbon, and even some decor pieces all in one tote.

Roll your Ribbon Back Up

This method will take up a lot  less space and packs away easier into your bins. I always like to think of ribbon like hair, so put it back on rollers to extend the life of your ribbon. The ribbon below was used on my large tree in the family room and various garlands through out my home; in order to be able to reuse it this year as outdoor bows I re-rolled the ribbon to keep in nice before it’s final journey into the outdoors. 

Store your Bows on Hangers

I know a lot of people like to store bows premade, which is fine, but they usually end up getting crushed. This is a tip from all my years in the wedding business, hang them up on a dry cleaning hangers to prevent crushing.

If you are unsure of the hangers that I am speaking about, they have a cardboard tube that is removable from the wire hanger, see picture below. If you carefully dislodge the tube, it creates an area to slide the center loop of your bows into allowing you to hang 3-4 bows up freely, then you re-attach the tube back to the wire hanger.

Try Storing all your greenery picks and garlands into totes together.

Bulky items like garlands take up so much space, especially if you plan on leaving them decorated and not crushing them. I personally remake mine each year to keep them fresh and new looking, so I take all the picks loose and store them separately by style and store all my garland in one tote together, which cuts the bulk. If you have a set style you can always store the items together in one tote for ease of locating.

The Boxes for Your Tree to Store Them.

One of the most common mistakes people make is to toss the cardboard box the tree comes in. However, it was built to hold your tree for shipping and storage so why not keep it for your tree to go back into?  I know they make Christmas tree storage bags, but in my personal experience those things are a total pain and not worth the money you spend on them. Sure they look great, but are you really taking people into your Christmas storage room?Keep the box, they have handles, stack easily and take up less space. The trees will fit back in them just fine and you will always have to re-fluff them every year, unless you plan on leaving them up and assembled; which is a interesting idea, but who has that kind of space? We put up 8 full size trees each year, including a 12 foot tree, so trust me on this one. Notice that we used the top shelves and went all the way up to the unfinished ceiling, directly under the ductwork, but not compressing it, that is very important.

Find Spaces for the Odd Shaped Large Pieces.

We have gotten creative with our storage for the larger pieces like the yard reindeer, which stack inside of each other, and art pieces. We dedicated spaces between shelves or in areas that can not house shelving units for these items. The idea is to utilize every stitch of space but still know where everything is and be able to put you hands on it easily. 

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My Favorite Storage Totes: