Holiday Storage

As I still live at home, my mom keeps all of our stuff in totes. And we also have a few atificial tress.
We have a special tradition where my dad makes or paints us an ornament every year. He and my mom also have a "together" ornament. AND my mother has three types of decorations -- red/green, burgandy/gold, and the homemades. So every year we have a choice of the three styles (which is fun and keeps things different.) It is a lot of totes! But yestday my mother divided up the homemades (because my sister is planning to be married by this time next year) and I have to admit -- I'm glad my mother has kept all this stuff! We have homemade decorations from the grandmas and little gifts and such from friends. Its all special and it's amazing what we fight over even 20+ years later!

Mmmm....this topic gives me an idea...every year I pull out a couple of boxes of collected decorations from the Xmas cupboard that will never be used because they just arent my style...they are just 'wrong'. So I just close the lids and put them back again...why...well I never really thought about it...I just do it!
But...my niece is having a Scouts garage sale/fund raiser next March...I think I know now where all those 'wrong' decorations will be going. Dont know why I didnt think of this before...pass them on...someone will think they are 'just right'. perfect...

i also do the tub thing and just write with a sharpie about which room it belongs in...but i am a little cautious to put my scrapbooks up with the rest of the decorations...we store all of ours in an attic and the temp. took it's toll on some of my halloween decorations...they actually melteed and stuck together...wondering if it might have the same effect on my scrapbooks and cd's???

We do it similar to how you do. We have three big bins that all the Christmas stuff goes in. I don't want more than three so once we start getting a little full, I'll have to get rid of the stuff I don't really love. It seems like each year, I put a few less things out so it might be time get rid of the things that I haven't put out in the last year or two.

One of the box has everything that we need for the tree - ornaments, lights, tree skirt; and the other two have the decorations for the rest of the house as well as the huge stack of Christmas books. We also have a cardboard box of outdoor Christmas lights in the garage.

Great post!

Love the idea of preparing the donation box early. I feel the same way about wanted to thin out the decorations but I am too exhausted post Christmas. Thanks for a great idea.

I love the green non-plastic boxes! I'm avoiding plastic whenever possible and definitely prefer quality and long-lasting over cheap.

I think I have 3-4 plastic tubs plus the artificial tree plus the outdoor lights. I can't keep my albums with the other xmas stuff because it will heat up beyond 115 degrees here. Your garage doesn't get too moist for the albums, Ali?

In terms of organization -- I keep my tree decorations in two boxes, my "mantel" (ahem, tv cabinet) in another box, etc. That way, I can just grab one box and spend an hour that day with just that one box. The next day we can pull out the tree and spend a few hours on the tree. After that the long cabinet in the back of the living room, etc.

I like working on one box at a time.

And I did donate one or two boxes worth of very nice decorations that just never really resonated with me a couple years ago. I loved doing that.

I have a Holiday Closet downstairs. The top shelf is for Easter, Birthday, Halloween. The rest is for Christmas. If I want to buy something new I need to get rid of something old since the closet is 95% full! I have the small box of cds, dvds, books in the front becuase we pull them out first and put them away last.

We too use colored tubs. Red / Green for Xmas and Orange / Black ones for Halloween. We donated a lot of misc items last year and it felt good! Spreading xmas cheer to others is a great feeling! I hadn't thought of putting the holiday books and such in the bins! That will make them so much more special next season! Like we got new storybooks! haha

As always great ideas. We too use tubs, ours are clear which helps know what is inside with out digging through it. For smaller decorations, or extra fragile ones egg cartons work great. They are a little out of control in the Qty department, and this year I will be sorting them all and sending alot to the local thrift store... time to pass along a few good things that we have outloved and let someone else love them.

Same here with the tubs and ornament boxes! And when the floods hit a few years ago - I was SO GRATEFUL for this storage!

I've had my christmas tree up since November 1st!! I was just too eager to get started for the holidays. =)

It's only my 4th christmas having my own home so I don't have too much decorations...yet. I just usually store my fake pre-lit tree in it's original box. For my ornaments, I make one each year for my son (and now daughter this year). My question to everyone is, how do you store your ornaments safely and into a nice little system? Last year, I just stored them in between the christmas tree skirt in a little underbed bin and wrapped each with newspaper. I don't know where to find an inexpensive ornaments container. Does anyone have suggestions? As well as for wrapping paper! How do you store it so it doesn't get bent or crinkled? I always end up buying MORE wrapping paper the following year.

Thanks!

that is so awesome--I didn't know you stored your dec daily albums with the decor. I love that ideas so much! so you can pull them out every year.

Oh how I love this topic! I have over 50 totes and tubs of Christmas decorations so I have to be organized. Each tub is numbered and then I have an Excel spreadsheet that lists each tub and what is inside. When it's time to decorate, I print out the spreadsheet and go to the exact tote that has what I'm looking for! It's worked for me for several years now. I have a post about it on my blog today if you want to see more!

I use tubs also but since we have been married 30 years I have a collection of several tubs. Thus I have a binder with a list of what is in each tub (this makes it easier to repack the tubs after Christmas and if something is missing I go look for it. That cuts down the finding of Christmas items days after you thought you had packed everything away and then having to find a place to store the 'found' item). Also before I take down the decorations each year, I take a picture of where everything was so I don't have to spend time figuring out where I put things the previous year or remember that I had changed some arrangement and liked it better. These pictures are also stored in the binder. The list also has little notations such as this item will eventually be given to one daughter or son or future grandchild. I store the binder in a specific place until the next holiday season arrives. The binder is actually a ringed photo album from Target so it is easy to slip in and out new pictures each year. If I have bought new or additional decorations I add them to the list.

We use tubs too - some big and some not as big - and each is labeled with Christmas -and the room the contents decorate ['Christmas - Boys' hall" or Christmas - kitchen", etc.] I'm blessed to have a walk-in attic but because of the storage space I can tend to collect a little too much holiday spirit so every couple of years I pull it all out into the playroom and sort / discard. [My husband says it looks like Santa has sneezed during those days - ha] Less is more, for sure -

Ali, I love to read your blog on a daily basis and learn so much. I have one question though....have you ever thought of making the text font black? For some reason, I find it so difficult to read (NO, I don't need glasses:). It just seems like black would be a little easier on the eyes. Thanks and Merry Christmas!

I have a couple of tubs, one for ornaments and one for everything else tree-related (skirt, topper, garlands, etc). I have not done much decorating around the house but this year I seem to be more inclined to do so, so I may need to add a tub for whatever things I buy. For our prelit tree I have one of those tree storage bags. We love it! The first year we tried to get it back in the box it came in for storage but it was just NOT HAPPENING. LOL

The tree and the tubs go up in the attic, but since I live in Houston, TX I have to store the more delicate things inside the house. (The attic gets super-hot almost year-round and the garage is both too hot and too humid.) I have a Sterilite cart with 4 big drawers in my master bedroom closet that I use to organize the "special" holiday items - like the handmade felt stockings my dad made, candles, scrapbooks, etc. I have 2 drawers for Christmas, 1 for Easter and 1 for Halloween. The drawers are also handy for if I buy something during the year, I just toss it in there until the season rolls around.

I hadn't thought about our books and movies, maybe this year would be a good time to address that! Until now they just live on the shelves with our "regular" books and movies, the kids just know not to read/watch them unless it's December! lol

I need to do some purging too. My husband's grandmother has been cleaning out her extensive collection of generic ornaments and decorations, and somehow most of it seems to have made its way into our house, though it's nothing that any of us really love.

ooooohhh...as I write this I am fearing going into the attic part of the 3rd floor and starting to retrieve Christmas things...Electrician moved stuff around when he was re-wiring this summer (God bless 'em on July 4th no less!) and I haven't had the stomach to deal.

I have tubs, sturdy cardboard boxes, more cardboard boxes, and plastic garbage bags (for wreaths etc...they stuff well into the low parts of the eves of the attic) I'd love a better ornament storage system...right now they're all in their original boxes in 3 huge tubs, for a number of the really odd shaped ones-which is mostly what i have- this is the best solution as they wouldn't fit well into a partitioned box. I do want better storage for special and antique ornaments.

My best tip is to cut "slabs" of cardboard to fit standing up into a carton and wrap your lights around the cardboard, then you can slide them into the box on end. I tape a cutout of the box on the cardboard so I know how big the strand is. That has been working great although this year am going to re-do when I put away as I'm dumping most of my old, crummy worn out lights in favor of new led ones.

Ali-I'm with you, I have to weed out too...I have enough to decorate two houses !! Maybe when I'm done with DD :-)

thanks so much for answering my questions. I got so much to think about. I really enjoyed reading your post. Thank you!

I do the box for each kids' ornaments too...and sadly, at age 4 and 8, my kids have plenty of ornaments for their own boxes! One thing extra I do is to keep a journal in the box (one for each kid) that explains the significance of each ornament. Most of the ornaments my kids have have very meaningful stuff attached to them, either whom they were received from or where we bought them (on vacation, etc). I think it will make a great record one day when they are decorating their first tree as a newly wed or first time parent.