How to Organize Holiday Decorations

Before you start organizing, you need to figure out what exactly you have. If you've been accumulating decorations over a number of years, the first thing to do is pull out your storage bins or boxes and look inside. Are there any decorations still in there? Many people hold on to some broken or unused decorations, for no reason other than that it seems wrong to throw them away. But in doing so, you may be losing several inches of storage space in each container. So, take a few minutes and a plastic garbage bag, and decide whether those unused decorations should go in the trash, be recycled or be given away to someone who might actually use them.

The next step can be to gather up all your holiday decorations, and place them in one area or room of your home. Try bringing your boxes or storage bins there, too. If you have a tree full of ornaments and lights, you might just gather everything near the tree and go from there. Decide whether you are going to store your indoor and outdoor decorations separately. Many people choose to store their outdoor decorations in the garage while their indoor decorations go into the basement or attic.

Once you've collected your decorations into one place and your bins or boxes are within sight, you may have a better idea of how many containers you need and whether the containers you have are adequate. Sometimes things that are packed away properly might take up a little more space -- for example, your fragile decorations may be better protected if packed inside newspaper or small individual boxes rather than crushed dangerously into a corner of the bin. So if you need an extra container, now is a great time to get one.

Now, you should be ready to move on to the next step. Read on to learn techniques for sorting your decorations.

Now that you've purged your storage containers of any damaged ornaments, you can deal with the decorations you really use. To start, try determining what categories you want to divide your decorations into. You might choose categories such as lights, ornaments, and decorations for tables. Or, you might want to separate the decorations by room. Then start sorting. Make piles of decorations that go with each category, and create new categories as needed. You can use index cards to label your piles with the appropriate category name [source: ABC, Just Organized, LLC].

Once you have that done, it's probably a good idea to distribute your containers near the piles. Choose the appropriate number of containers for each pile. If some categories have only a few things, you may decide to combine them into one container. Now, peel off (or cross out) any old labels you have on the containers. This is very important. Make new labels to match your new categories, and place them on the containers. A label maker works great for this, of course, but masking tape and a permanent marker do the trick, too.

Another idea you may want to consider is numbering your containers. Think about the way you generally decorate your home each year. If you always set up the tree first, followed by the knick-knacks, followed by the dining room table, label these bins 1, 2 and 3. This will be helpful if someone else in your family has the job of digging the bins out of their storage spot and carrying them where they're needed. If the first bin you need is tree lights, you could label this "#1 Tree Lights" [source: Just Organized, LLC].

At this point, you are ready to pack. For storage tips as you begin the last step in this process, read on.

When it comes time to put your decorations into containers, generally it's a good idea to pack heavy things near the bottom of each container and light things on top of them. Try not to pack a container so full that you have to force the lid on. That's probably not good for your decorations, and it doesn't leave room for anything new.

Here are some specific storage suggestions for some different types of decorations:

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