Organizing

Proper Christmas ornament storage means you’ll still have those holiday ornaments next year–in one piece. Plus by packing them away efficiently each year, your holiday ornament storage will take less space in your home. Another benefit is you’ll be able to easily find your holiday decorations and ornaments each season. Here are several tips for Christmas ornament storage that specifically relate to undecorating your Christmas tree.

KEEP IT TOGETHER

It’s helpful to keep all of your Christmas tree ornaments and decorations in their own ornament storage boxes. That means keep them in a separate decorations or ornament storage box from other interior or exterior Christmas ornaments and decor.

The reason for this is that decorating the Christmas tree is a project in itself. If you have everything related to that project in one section and/or in a separate Christmas storage box then you won’t have to dig around to find JUST your Christmas tree ornaments and decorations.

WARNING: FRAGILE

Remove the most breakable and delicate ornaments and decorations from your Christmas tree first. Either pack them away right then or carefully set them aside to pack away later. You would do the latter if for instance you want those particular holiday ornaments to go in the storage box last or on top.

The reason that you want to take them off the tree first is simply so you don’t accidentally knock them off while you’re removing other tree decorations. Breakable ornaments would be ones made, for instance, from glass. Delicate could mean holiday ornaments or decorations that won’t necessarily break easily but that might bend out of shape or get crushed easily.

Be sure that you cushion individual fragile ornaments using bubble wrap, a few layers of soft paper towels or heavy tissue, etc. Or use a Christmas ornament storage box with dividers. Many stores sell these customized boxes which are particularly good for standard size Christmas ball ornaments, etc.

Try to put individual delicate ornaments back into their original boxes with their original custom fitting Styrofoam inserts (yes…easier said than done sometimes.).

NEXT: CATEGORIZE CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT STORAGE

Once you’re done removing the breakable and delicate ornaments and decorations from your tree, start removing and sorting remaining ornaments by category. You can do this two ways.

One way is to circle the tree and collect all of one category at a time. For instance, collect all the round Christmas ball-shaped ornaments. Then collect the little material Santa clauses, snow men, etc. Then take down the flat material stockings or flat cardboard ornaments. And so forth.

The other way is to remove all ornaments from each section of the tree at once BUT sort them ongoing into nearby piles of categories.

Once you have removed all of the ornaments and decorations from the tree, you’ll then pack these sorted piles of Christmas ornaments away in your ornament storage boxes.

While undecorating the Christmas tree, keep your ornament storage boxes all nearby and open. That way you can put some of the decorations and ornaments directly into the boxes as appropriate.

Use a lot of smaller boxes and containers that fit into your larger Christmas storage boxes. This method further protects your individual ornaments from breaking or bending. Of course, it keeps them neatly sorted and organized too.

But this way smaller, lightweight or different shaped ornaments don’t get crushed by their heavier, larger counterparts. Your holiday ornaments and decorations don’t slide around in one big storage bin banging into each other(which can lead to breakage).

If you find that you have extra space in these smaller Christmas ornament storage boxes, stuff some crumpled newspaper, shipping air packets or even crumpled paper towels along the inside of the box. Now everything will stay in place.

Label these smaller boxes. (Put a labelmaker on your Christmas list if you don’t already have one.)

ONE FINAL TIP

Don’t seal and store any Christmas ornament storage box until you’re totally done undecorating your Christmas tree. Why? Because inevitably you’ll find an ornament or two hiding in the branches that you overlooked and needs to go in box A or box B, etc. Wouldn’t that be a hassle if you’d sealed that ornament storage box, perhaps even put it away already?

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