I honestly can’t believe the response for my post How to Store Holiday Decorations! Thanks for letting me know this is something you wanted help with. Can I let you in on a secret? Taking down and storing holiday decorations is my least favorite part of the season. I might not be alone in that.

Here are some tips on how to store decorations. First, get some help. I know families who won’t let their kids touch the decorations because they are breakable. There are about three ornaments that I won’t let my 8 and 10 year-old handle. The rest of it? They are more than capable of un-decorating. As a bonus, they get to look at everything one more time, and they are really imprinting these memories of special ornaments in their little heads. It’s really very sweet. 

They pulled the decorations off the tree and laid them out for me so I could place them in their special boxes.

Before you start, make sure ALL of the holiday storage bins are open in the rooms where you need to in-decorate. Trust me. It slows things down if you have to wonder if you are putting things in the right bins, or if perhaps you’ve left a bin in storage.

If you have a lot of holiday decorations, make them unmistakably easy to find in your storage area by using color coded bins. During each holiday season, you can buy bins that match the dominant holiday color. Orange for Halloween. Red and green for Christmas. Pastel for spring and Easter.

Those bins are not available all year long in retail stores, so buy as many as you need before the holiday. After the holiday, they’ll be as hard to find as an Elf of the Shelf in June.

If you can’t find colored bins, clear bins are the next best thing. You can easily label them by writing the holiday, and even the contents, on a sheet of regular printer paper and facing that paper outward from inside the bin. Write it large enough so you can see from across the room. Then write it larger. People make the mistake of hand labeling in their regular handwriting, but LARGE LABELS are better, for sure. 

Instead of storing similar items together, consider storing decorations according to where you use them. Maybe have a bin for porch decorations. One bin for entry foyer decorations. And one bin for dining room décor. When you take out the bins next year, you’ll be able to haul them right to the place where you’ll want to decorate.

Separate breakables by using dividers. If dividers don’t come with your storage bins or you need odd sizes, look inside wine cases. Liquor stores will usually give you free doxes and dividers.

Carefully wrap each breakable item with tissue paper. Recycling tissue from gifts is fine. Re-use bubble wrap from packages that you’ve received to cushion breakables.

Layer each level of your divided box carefully to ensure nothing gets squished.

If you have any lawn decorations out and you’ve got bad weather, God bless you. I say leave them until the thaw. No one will think less of you, I promise. And for Pete’s sake, don’t go up on a ladder outside in bad weather. It’s just not worth it!

But if you aren’t getting winter weather, make sure that holiday lawn decorations are cleaned before storing. Stains are easier to remove now, before they go into storage. Also, you don’t want to accidentally bring insects or their nests into your storage space.

While you are putting away this year’s decorations, take a peek at any that are still in the storage area. If you didn’t use it this year, are you ready to toss or donate it? Now is the time to release décor that you don’t like, especially if you need to make room for new items that you acquired during the season.

I have a few more tips on storing holiday decorations here.

Are you still stumped on how to organize and store holiday decorations? The main thing is just to start! It only takes about a half a day for an average household to get holiday decorations down. With some hot cocoa and jazzy tunes, maybe you’ll get organized in less time.