Decorating season is upon us and over the next couple of months we’ll be changing our decor several times putting up the ghosts and pumpkins, changing that out for Pilgrims and turkeys and then Santa Claus and Christmas trees. That’s a lot of stuff to be circulating through your home in a relatively short period of time but with a little thought and planning you’ll save yourself and aggravation.
Decide what decorations go where and group them together. Keep your outdoor decorations with other outdoor pieces and indoor pieces with other indoor pieces. As you pack them away. make sure to label the containers (Halloween lawn decorations, Thanksgiving kitchen decorations, etc).
Wrap breakables. Using bubble wrap not only protects your items but it can be used and reused and it’s clear so you can see what’s inside.
Choose the right container for your items. It may be tempting to get one big box and put everything in it but if the box is too big, items can shift and break. Consider investing in plastic storage totes that protect from moisture and don’t provide a food source for all those nasty creepy crawlies this climate seems to attract. These often are sold in colors around the holiday season (orange and black at Halloween, red and green at Christmas) to help you find the right totes.
Never store edibles! That candy cane wreath may look pretty but after a year in storage the thrill will be long gone and, while the bugs and critters may thank you, no one else will.
Once you get the containers to your storage unit, try to keep all the Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving boxes together. It will save time next year if you can grab all the boxes for each holiday at once and you won’t have to hunt around for stray packages. Since you won’t need these for another year, you can store the holiday items in a corner or along the back wall so you won’t have to shift them around when you are getting more frequently used items.
