As the holiday season draws to a close, one of the most dreaded annual chores becomes imminent: taking down and storing your seasonal decorations. Sure, decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and others have their charm, but they can also take up an awful lot of valuable storage space, especially in smaller homes and apartments. To help you store your holiday decorations correctly and ensure they take up as little storage space as possible, the storage experts at iStorage put together the following list of top 10 tips for storing seasonal decorations. Read on to get them all and store your holiday baubles and bangles like a pro!
How to Store Seasonal Decorations
1. Store Everything in a Cool, Dry, Dark Place
The thing about most holiday decorations is that they’re made of relatively fragile materials. plastic, paper, wax, glitter, and all the glue that holds everything together can be severely damaged or destroyed if they’re subject to high heat, high humidity, freezing cold, and more. To prevent that, storing your temperature-sensitive holiday decorations in a cool, dark, and dry place is a must.
2. Label Boxes and Bins Very Well
Labeling the boxes and bins you store them in is essential, depending on how many decorations you have. The more well-labeled, the easier it is to find your favorite decorations next season. We recommend using self-stick labels, which allow you to remove them and re-label the box or bin if the contents change.
3. Use Specialized Containers (But Only if You Have the Extra Storage Space)
Specialized containers are constantly being made for holiday decorations. There are, for example, specialized containers for wreaths, Christmas balls, wrapping paper, and many more. The problem is that these special storage containers take up much more storage space. Yes, they protect the decorations well, but if you don’t have a lot of extra space at home, you might want to use regular containers and stuff them as full (within reason) as you can.
4. Don’t Go Overboard with Packing Paper
One mistake many folks make is using too much packing paper when storing their decorations for the season. Most Thanksgiving or Halloween decorations can be stored in a box with no problem and very little packing paper as long as the boxes are handled gently. More importantly, you’ll fit more decorations in fewer boxes and bins, taking up less storage space during the rest of the year.
5. Keep the Original Box from Your Artificial Tree
Artificial Christmas trees come in all sizes, some of which are big! The original box is by far the best to store them during the off-season. It was, after all, made to fit your particular tree so that it would fit back inside.
6. Remember Pest Prevention
Pests, especially rats, mice, and squirrels, can easily and quickly destroy your prized holiday decorations. Bugs like ants, termites, and others can do damage, which makes it very important to use pest prevention measures. Some of the best include the following;
- Use clear plastic bins to store your decorations. Pests can’t get into them as quickly as cardboard. (More on these below.)
- Use cedar blocks or chips. Most pests can’t stand the smell of cedar.
- Avoid mothballs. They’re smelly, made with hazardous chemicals, and don’t work well.
- Never store any type of food, even dried, with your decorations. (It will attract the pests you want to keep away!)
7. Use Clear, Plastic Storage Bins
We mentioned earlier that labeling is essential when storing Christmas decorations. However, if you use clear plastic bins, you won’t need to label them because you can see what’s inside easily and quickly. Plus, large plastic bins (30-gallon bins are best) stack very quickly, thus taking up less storage space!
8. Use a Repurposed Garden Hose Reel for Holiday Lights
Not only will an old garden hose reel help you wrap up and store your lights more quickly, but unwrapping them next year will be much easier and go much faster. This hack will also help prevent your lights from getting tangled.
9. Use Drink Holders to Store Fragile Balls and Baubles
If you’ve ever gotten a hot drink from a café or Starbucks, you’ve likely seen the drink holders they provide to prevent you from burning your fingers. These same holders work like a charm for small glass balls and ornaments and can be layered in a box to keep them all safe during the off-season. Simply pop in the ornament!
10. Vacuum Seal Soft Decorations
Vacuum sealers for food can be a great way to store soft decorations. They will stay well-protected from humidity, and your favorite soft seasonal decorations will take up less storage space! Vacuum sealing some items is also a great way to keep home organization under control throughout the year!
Let iStorage Help You Store Your Seasonal Decorations
At iStorage, we know it’s a hassle to find the storage space to store Christmas ornaments, Thanksgiving decorations, and hideous (but fun) Halloween gewgaws. That’s why we offer safe, clean storage units where you can store your seasonal decorations with ease and peace of mind. When you’re ready, reserve your storage unit online from iStorage, and it will be ready and waiting when you arrive to store all of your holiday goodness securely