Brilliant Tips and Hacks for Christmas Decor Stora...

Christmas decor storage ideas and hacks that will make next year’s decorating easier!

I’ve figured out some great holiday storage solutions over the years that have helped to keep our Christmas decor better organized. 

These methods have made pulling out decor for the next Christmas much more efficient. These little tips save my sanity each November when the holiday decor comes out and when I put them away for the year.

In general I find packing holiday decor away is faster
and easier than setting it up! Am I the only one? I quite like the process, it feels cathartic to clean up the house and simplify everything for the new year. 

Here are my Christmas decor organization methods and a few tips I’ve figured out along the way! 

1. Label your decor for next year

My first tip is to label as much as you can — especially the stuff you put up
in the same spot every year. 

I’ve found over the years that labeling light
strands I use for specific areas helps a TON!: 

I label any spot that uses more than one strand of lights — both inside and
outside. So when I get them out I know exactly how many bushes or trees are
covered by that group of lights. 

I also label them inside, like the strands on
our stair garland. That way I’m not trying to figure out how many I used the
year before. 

I store them away with the items that need a remote,
like for the garland on our stairs. I just keep them plugged into the light strand. 

If you have more than one set of these remotes, you know the joy of trying to
figure out which one goes with which remote. 😉 

2. Store your trees upright!

Next up is the Christmas tree storage! We have…uhhh, a few artificial trees. 😉 

My dream my whole adult
life has been to store all of our Christmas trees upright — and not take ONE thing
off of them each year. 

Well in this house, my dreams were realized, at least for a couple of our trees!
We have a storage room in the basement with enough space to store a couple of our Christmas trees upright. 

You just place it over the tree and tuck the
branches in here and there — it zips up and then cinches as well:  

You may have to fluff a little the next year, but otherwise everything stays
put!

I loved that cover so much, I went to buy one more, but they were sold
out. 

They are made for nine foot trees so are plenty big for our seven to eight
foot trees. It’s so roomy that it’s easy to grab up the extra and tie it at
the bottom. 

To carry them around, one of us grabs the top and one the bottom.
You’ll be surprised at how much stays put! 

We’ve stored a couple of our trees like this for years and they look almost
perfect when we uncover them the next holiday season. It saves a TON of time
— you just need to have the space. 

And really, they don’t take up much more
space than the horizontal bags, you just have to have the vertical storage
space. 

3. Wrap up Christmas lights

Storing Christmas lights can be a pain! If you don’t keep them stored just right, they are a mess and tangled up when you pull them out the next year. 

I’ve found the best way to store lights is by wrapping them around something — in the past I’ve used pieces of cardboard boxes and just wrapped the lights around them. 

It’s worked OK, but the cardboard was flimsy and didn’t hold up as well as I’d like. Then I found these super inexpensive light cord wrappers: 

So far these have worked great! The handle on the side makes it super easy to hold and wrap the lights around. 

They are lightweight but hold a TON of lights with ease: 

Our outdoor lights have smaller LED bulbs, so if you use standard or larger lights like the C7 bulbs, you’ll probably want to use one of these wind up organizers for each light strand.

4. Putting the decor away 

I find it easier to organize my holiday decor bins by like items instead of rooms. 

So, for example, when I pull all of the garland down, every piece of it goes into one bin. Same for decor pieces, filler, and soft items like stockings, kitchen towels, etc. 

To make this even easier, I use the dining table (any central location will do!) and pile ALL of the Christmas decor on top in sections:

The only decor not on here is anything from the tree and the thicker garland. 

But otherwise I walk around and gather everything up and sort it out on the table first. 

Have you ever found Christmas decor here and there months later? This helps to avoid that!

I find I gather every last thing this way — no more finding random items throughout January and February! 😂

Then I can just bring in each plastic container and fill it with the like items right from the table. It makes the process of putting the decor away MUCH quicker! 

5. A designated spot for Christmas decor 

For years we stored all of the Christmas decor in our basement, but I realized
a few years in that it was a major chore to get it all upstairs (sometimes two
flights). 

Since then I’ve stored almost everything in our garages. 

A few years ago I treated myself to new, clear storage containers for our Christmas decor. It made me so happy! 

Our old bins were covered with paint or
busted up. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about seeing everything inside — I was
worried it would feel too messy. 

But I LOVE IT: 

I can’t even tell you how NICE it is to see everything! I was going to
label each bin, but decided against it once I got everything in there. There’s
no need really. 

I did a serious purge of all our decor before putting everything back. I
haven’t really gone through the Christmas decor in years. 

Now we use more of the smaller bins instead of larger we had in the past. The smaller ones are so much easier to carry around: 

We had similar wood shelves built up to the ceiling in our last garage, and
we loved it so much we had them built again in just the second day in this
house! 

Before, this corner was a mix of random stuff, but
I decided to make it all seasonal. It’s mostly Christmas, but I
have Halloween and Fourth of July stuff here too. 

These are the plastic bins I used — all of them have latching handles that hold the lids on. Love that! 

These bins with locking lids are very similar and are a few bucks less. 

Half of this wall is tree storage! Don’t you wish you could squish the Christmas trees down as small as they come in the original box?:

Last year we started using these cinching utility straps to tighten up each section of the tree as we store it away. It doesn’t make them as small as the first time you open up a tree box, but it does make them much easier to store!

Plus the pieces of the tree are easier to carry around when they are cinched up with the straps. 

6. Solutions for the smaller holiday decor

• I hang most of my seasonal wreaths along the side of the wood shelves in the garage. I like being able to access them easily! For my Christmas wreaths, I use a wreath bag to store them on the shelves. 
• The majority of our Christmas ornaments are not breakable — the are inexpensive plastic bulbs. For that reason, I don’t buy fancy ornament storage boxes, I just pile them into the bins. The fragile ornaments are the last to be put away and are laid on top. We’ve never had one break!

If you want more protection, you can use plastic cups to protect your fragile ornaments! 

• I keep all of our holiday wrapping paper in the garage as well. The bows, ribbon, tissue paper and gift bags all go into their own storage bin. The wrapping paper rolls are stored in this wrapping paper storage bag. It has room to keep little things like tape and gift tags at the top as well. 

When I’m wrapping gifts, I just grab the bin and paper I need.

We had these shelves built to fit the big parts of our giant family room
tree — if you build something similar, make sure to measure your bins and
then build your shelves so you can stack numerous bins on each one. 

Do you do anything specific with your holiday storage that makes the next
year easier for you? These tips help me a ton — especially the stand up
tree covers!