Christmas comes and goes quickly, and the time to pack up all the decorations you worked so hard to put up is here. If you’re as full of holiday spirit as we are, you’ve got a lot of decorations up, and it can seem nearly impossible to put all of them away. Luckily, Chores offers services to help you pack your decorations up after the season ends efficiently and quickly. We’re happy to do it for you, but here are just a couple of things we learned throughout the years that make it easy to break out the decorations again next holiday season.
Hang Wreaths
Wreaths were made to hang, so why store them any differently? Laying wreaths down amidst a clutter of other decorations can ruin the wireframe on them or flatten the leaves and make them look less full when you hang them up again next December.
Put them on a hanger and drape a plastic bag over them to keep them clear of dust, and try to give them their own space in the attic so they aren’t flattened by other decorations.
Store Lights Tangle-Free
Anyone who’s owned a pair of wired headphones knows what happens–you put them in your pocket, and when you take them out, they’re magically tangled in ways you didn’t even know was possible. The same happens with lights every year, and it’s a huge frustration when you have to deal with it in the middle of decorating.
There’s a simple solution to this–when you’re taking lights off the tree or anywhere you put them around the house, start with one end of the string in your hand. As you take the string in, wrap it around your elbow and back through your hand to form a loop. Once you have the whole thing in your hand, take a zip-tie and tie it around the middle of the loop and store it in a ziploc bag. Mark the bag with where that string of lights goes, and each bag can go in the same container in the attic or basement. When you take it all out again next year, you’ll be amazed at the lack of tangled mess!
Ornaments
The simplest solution for storing ornaments is putting them in their original boxes and all in a container, but not everyone remembers to keep the original boxes when they buy ornaments.
If you do have the original box, be sure to wrap each ornament in tissue paper or newspaper to prevent them from breaking when you’re packing them away and to help keep dust off them while they sit in storage for the next year.
If you don’t have the original box, instead of stuffing them in a bag and hoping they don’t break, get creative–we like to use empty egg cartons, plastic containers for apples, or simply glue cups to a large sheet of cardboard and put ornaments in each cup. No matter what, use plenty of newspaper to cover them.
Artificial Tree Storage
For those of us who use the same artificial tree year after year, it can be a chore to take it apart and stuff it back into the same box it came in. Try something new this year and plastic wrap your whole tree! If you have the room to stand it up somewhere in a basement corner, you could even leave the lights on so when you take the tree out next December, all you need to do is cut the plastic wrap and you’ve got a fully functional tree without any effort!
Pack smarter, not harder–contact us and let Chores do it for you so you can kick your feet up and relax once the holiday season ends!