Organizing all my Christmas stuff

Happy New Year!!!!



I just finished packing away all our Christmas stuff.

I love to decorate for Christmas, but I also love to lead a pretty uncluttered life. So I am always trying to strike a balance between the Christmas things I acquire, how long it takes to decorate the house (my favorite part), how long it takes to take everything down again (not my favorite part) and how much space it takes up storing everything (my least favorite part).

And that is the explanation why I do not have 3 moving, lit, reindeer in my front yard for Christmas

Here is how my house was decorated this year

When I hear about suggestions to save wine bottle cardboard dividers to use for Christmas ornament storage, I always think: "wow, great idea", but then I also immediately thing about how much room that is going to take up in my garage. I don't have the space for that. Do you?

I have allotted myself four clear bins for indoor Christmas stuff.

One for glass balls and the star tree topper, one for all the tree ornaments, one for house decor and one for things I use for Christmas projects such as pinecones, garlands, etc.

When I started packing everything down, I first took inventory of all the new stuff I have bought or created this Christmas.



I had made a tree skirt, garlands and decorations. The paper bird is made by a friend of mine and B got it at a kid's ornament exchange. The feather wreaths I just bought last week at West Elm at 50% off.



I like to pack up everything in clear bags. Sometime i write notes to myself on the bags about the items inside such as the year made or who I got it from etc. I have used this method probably 8 years now and it works really well for me.

The ziplocks have a little amount of air in them. A little cushion for the ornaments. I have moved many times with these bins and so far nothing has broken.



The glass balls and tree topper go in one bin. I actually have room in this bin for more stuff.

I have a bin that holds all my Christmas home decor items. Tree skirts, decorative ornaments, nut cracker, stockings, our Christmas book etc. I put the feather wreath and new tree skirt here. Here is how I layered the items in that bin.



For the ornaments I have a box for very small or breakable items.



Everything else get's a large or small ziplock bag. I group all like ornaments together and leave a bit of air in all the baggies.



Then I fill the bin with the heavy items at the bottom and all the large ziplocks.



Then I fill in with all the small ziplock bags.



I put my fake garlands into my project bin because there was space.



And this new IKEA wreath that I did not have room to blog about... It will make a re-appearance next Christmas

This system helps me get done fast. It actually only ends up taking me less than a couple of hours to de-Christmas-fy my house and take the tree down. I also use this time to declutter the boxes. Anything that I have not used or love gets tossed. That is my rule for keeping or tossing anything.

Use or love? Has to get at least one "yes" to stay

The best part: when I take out everything next year I don't have anything tangled or broken and I can retrieve the specific bins according to the task I want to take on - decorate the tree or making crafts. I have a LOT more craft stuff, but for that I have a craft cabinet (I'll share that sometime) and I use that all year, so I don't keep that with my Christmas stuff.

And that is ...


Do you have a great system for storing or packing your Christmas stuff?