Plum Crazy: Christmas Storage Organizing Tips

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Christmas Storage Organizing Tips

Over the past 10 years of having our own home and yearly decorations, I wanted to share a couple of tips I have discovered to keep things neater for next year.

1. Label bins so you know what is in there
This is the first year I'm labeling the bins, even though I've wanted to for awhile now. Every year we bring bins and boxes up from the basement without knowing what is where, and we have a whole room taken up with bins while we find everything we need to put the tree up. It's generally well-organized, but not knowing where the stockings are exactly means more time and digging around. So this year, I finally just wrote on a piece of paper with a Sharpie and taped it onto the box with packing tape.
If I had more time on my hands, I would try and make it prettier like she does here, but who cares, it's done and labeled and will be under our stairs for 11.8 months of the year, right?

2. Wrap lights and garland around cardboard box pieces
This has saved us so many headaches when putting up lights every year. I do this with all outdoor lights and our tree and garland lights for indoors. Sometimes I will try plugging a strand in before unwrapping it and if I discover it no longer works, it can go straight into the garbage. Think of how many hours I've saved, not having to unravel a broken strand from working ones before I throw it out!

The labeled photo below shows how I separated types of unbreakable ornaments in regular plastic bags, and underneath that are shoe boxes with the more fragile ornaments wrapped in paper towels, bubble wrap, or tissue paper (whatever I had lying around). The ornament hooks are in a small plastic container on the bottom left (along with a couple ornament stragglers we found under the couch after cleanup).