Safeload Coverage
When it comes it decorating for the holidays, everyone loves the decorating part. It can be a pain to pull out your holiday decor, and it’s even worse to put away your holiday decorations. If your decorations aren’t organized, it’s more of a hot mess. This is why Moving Help® has put together 10 tips on how to store holiday decorations.
This way, you can be prepared for the entire calendar year for your holiday decorations, so you have almost as much fun putting away holiday decorations as you do when decorating your home with your decor.
Don’t have time to read the entire list of 10 tips? No worries, jump down to the section that interests you the most.
1. Plan Ahead
Before you begin organizing your holiday decorations, you have to start at the beginning. You had to purchase each holiday decoration before bringing them home. You can keep your holiday decor from getting out of control by making sure you already know what you own.
We recommend creating an inventory saved somewhere about what holiday decorations you own and how many duplicates or multiples of the same decor. For example, you might own three Christmas wreaths, seven skeletons, and 13 Valentine’s Day heart-shaped plates.
By knowing what you own ahead of time, you can determine whether or not you need to purchase a specific holiday decoration.
This will help you save money, time, space, and keep you organized.
2. Reuse Decorations
While it’s fun to use new decorations every year, we recommend reusing holiday decorations. The average American spends about $241 in decorations in 2024, according to Macaroni KID.
Decorations can be expensive, and if you buy decor that you truly love, you’re more than likely to use it more than once. Plus, it’s not likely people are going to realize you used the same exact decor as last year.
Not only are you reusing decorations and saving money, but it keeps you organized as well with your holiday storage.
3. Find Multi-Purpose Use for Holiday Decor
You can stretch your dollar and your budget by using holiday decor for multiple purposes. Multi-purpose items are a great way to spread holiday cheer without needing a new item for each holiday.
For example, if you have a green plant vase for indoors, you can use it for St. Patrick’s Day, Earth Day, or Christmas. If the vase’s color is red, you can use it for Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, or Christmas.
Another way is to use a plain item and decorate it as the holidays pass. For example, if you own a plain wreath, you can add your own decorations to it for Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July, fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas.
4. Declutter decorations
You shouldn’t just place decorations into storage without a second thought. You should ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I like this holiday decoration?
- Do I want to use this holiday decoration?
- Has this decoration seen better days?
- Do I want to get rid of this decoration?
- Does this decoration spark joy in me?
Depending on each person, if you say “No” one or more times, it might be time to donate or throw away that item.
This will help declutter your decorations before you even begin putting them away.
5. Clean Your Decor
Indoor decorations can get dusty and dirty. Outdoor decorations can face multiple elements. Before you put away your decor, you should clean them properly, so they’re fresh and clean the next time you pull them out of their boxes.
Just make sure you follow the cleaning instructions, so you don’t accidentally ruin them.
6. Protection for Decorations
Don’t just toss, shake, or aimlessly throw your decorations into a bin. You need to make sure they stay protected whether they’re going into storage or will eventually move across the country with you down the road.
If your decorations are breakable, you should wrap them with packing paper or bubble cushion.
If your decor is fragile, you definitely need to use bubble cushion. You also can wrap fragile items in packing paper first and then bubble cushion second.
This reinforcement will give decorations much-needed protection when storing them.
7. Use Original Boxes
Decorations such as nutcrackers, artificial Christmas trees, Halloween inflatables and silhouettes, decorative eggs and tabletop scenes for Easter, and turkey figurines for Thanksgiving, are a few examples where you should use the decoration’s original box.
These boxes help maintain the sturdiness and safety of the holiday decor. The box is designed for that specific item. Plus, you don’t have to buy a new box or fit them into a plastic bin after the holiday season is over.
8. Store With Plastic Bins
If you’ve been asking yourself, “What should you store your holiday decorations into after the holiday is over,” we have the answer for you: It’s plastic bins.
Plastic bins are more expensive than cardboard boxes, but this is a long-term purchase, and they’ll last much longer. After multiple uses, a cardboard box’s integrity will begin to degrade. That can lead to less protection, crumbled boxes, or general falling apart. These factors could lead to broken decorations.
Nobody wants broken decorations.
What Plastic Bins Should I Purchase?
Which plastic bins you should purchase will be a personal choice. Some people like to purchase bins based on color schemes. Others like to purchase translucent plastic bins. Some like to mix the combo together.
We recommend purchasing translucent plastic bins, so you can see your holiday decor inside each box. This will save you time from opening and closing every plastic bin to find the right holiday decorations.
We also highly recommend labeling your plastic bins, so you know everything that’s inside that bin. At the least, you should label what holiday is associated with the decor items inside.
9. Keep Decor Indoors or in
Climate-Controlled Rooms
Holiday decorations aren’t meant for the outside elements — yes, even outdoor holiday decorations, which are weather resistant. You should keep your holiday decor inside your home. Whether that’s in a room, basement, or attic, it won’t matter.
If you can’t store your holiday decorations at home, make sure you get a climate-controlled storage unit.
This will help keep your items from breaking. They also won’t have to potentially deal with the outdoor elements as well.
10. Organize by Holidays or Seasons
One of the best keys for how to store holiday decorations is to organize them by holidays or seasons. All the plastic bins should be grouped together by holiday or season instead of being mismatched together.
Whether you’re organizing them on a shelf or in a room, you’ll want them to be in order.
One of our favorite ways to store holiday decorations is to organize them by calendar year. Therefore, you might see the order go:
- New Year’s
- Valentine’s Day
- St. Patrick’s Day
- Easter
- Spring
- Mother’s Day
- Memorial Day
- Summer
- Pride Month
- Father’s Day
- Fourth of July
- Fall/Autumn
- Halloween
- Thanksgiving
- Winter
- Christmas
Rather than organizing them in a random order like this way:
- Christmas
- Winter
- Valentine’s Day
- Easter
- Mother’s Day
- Memorial Day
- Spring
- Summer
- Father’s Day
- Pride Day
- Fourth of July
- Halloween
- Thanksgiving
- Fall/Autumn
- New Year’s
- St. Patrick’s Day
At the end of the day, pick an order that makes the most sense to you.
How to Store Holiday Decorations Today
Learning how to store holiday decorations to help with organization doesn’t have to be difficult when the time comes to take down your holiday decor. With a little bit of preparation ahead of time, you can make your life easier when the holiday is over.
If you need help loading or unloading your holiday decorations out of a storage unit, you can find labor-only movers who are ready to assist with you with Moving Help.
