We’re into that period when I start getting a bit tired of Christmas. I’m not one of those people who strip all baubles and lights from the house on Boxing Day – but I do have some sympathy with those folks. I love that empty feeling the house has after the decorations come down. We generally wait until after New Year’s Eve to take down our decorations. I like to spend time on this rather than slinging everything into crumpled cardboard boxes. This means our Christmas decorations look their best for years to come. Here are my top tips for storing Christmas decorations.
Before you take down your xmas decs…
Take pictures! As well as preserving your memories of Christmas past, this will help you to remember what worked and what didn’t in terms of decoration.
Get a bin bag ready…
You will inevitably break some Christmas decorations each year. That smashed bauble? That string of lights that doesn’t work? They need to go. Make sure you dispose of broken fairy lights and other electrical Christmas ornaments responsibly, by the way. They should not be put in the bin but should go to the recycling centre for processing. Christmas decorations on the whole are made from such a wide variety of materials that it can be hard to know how to recycle them. Learn more about disposing of tired or broken Christmas decorations with Recycle Now.
Get the right containers
You can buy specialist Christmas tree bags and boxes, and these will keep your artificial tree looking its best for years to come. This ensures you get maximum value from your investment; and the more times you re-use your artificial tree, the better for the environment. Store glass baubles in the containers they came in or any rigid box with partitions will do. Egg boxes or cheap fishing tackle boxes are just right for smaller decorations . But we save attractive Christmas gift boxes and bags for this purpose, too, once they get too scruffy for gifting. Store strings of Christmas lights in their own bags – that way you don’t end up with a huge knotted mass of cables next year. And label everything.
Store in the right place
Attics and garages, with their fluctuating temperatures, are not the best place to store Christmas decs. Since you only need them once a year – and on a planned basis at that – consider getting them right out of your house and into a storage unit. Your self-storage insurance will cover Christmas decorations, too.
Store according to your Christmas traditions
In our house we have a box imaginatively named (and labelled) The December 1 Box. It’s a nice start to the festive season each year when it comes out of storage. It contains our wooden advent set and our Christmas card list (to be honest, this is just all our Christmas cards from the previous year stuffed into a paper bag so we can check who sent to us the previous year). It also contains bits and pieces for wrapping, and various other early decorations. I put this box away last so I can get at it easily at the start of the Christmas season.
These simple Christmas decoration storage steps should make your life easier in December 2019. And with that, we at Store and Insure would like to wish you a happy new year!
