Once Christmas is over, you are left with a big pile of stuff that needs to be put away as wrapping paper, new toys, and boxes start to take over your house.
Organising everything leftover from Christmas is everyone’s least favourite part of the holiday, and often overwhelming if you are exhausted from all the excitement.
However, storing doesn’t have to be stressful, especially when done right. Knowing where and how you’re going to store your decorations and presents will make the whole process a lot more stress free.
Create Zones
Before you dive into the organising, you should create zones or places where you’re going to store everything.
You can store baubles and other tree decorations in your garage, and new presents will need to find a place in wardrobes or kid’s rooms.
Since your Christmas decorations are only needed once a year, you want to make sure you keep them out of the way for the rest of the year. A perfect solution for this would be to have customised cupboards.
Having an allocated space in your garage for your decorations will ensure they stay out of the way and don’t clutter up any storage you need access to more regularly. This also saves delicate baubles from accidentally being knocked around during the year!
It can feel overwhelming when it comes to presents, especially if you have children and you find you are drowning in toys.
You can start by sorting presents into categories. New clothes, new shoes, or jewellery can be organised into wardrobes, and things like toys and children’s books can either go into kid’s rooms or playrooms.
If you don’t have a garage, even having specially designed wardrobes with extra space for your Christmas bins will be a huge space saver.
Tree Takedown
Now that you know what needs to go where you can get to work!
The biggest and most obvious symbol of Christmas – your tree – should be the first thing to come down. The joy it once brought will start to fade – especially when those pine needles really start falling off.
Baubles are the most delicate, so you want to make sure they are stored carefully in a well padded box. And there will inevitably be some that didn’t make it through the season, either by clumsy hands or an over enthusiastic dog tail.
But those lost to gravity make room for new ones! New baubles are often collected throughout the holiday season, so make sure you have room in your storage box for some new tree decorations.
If you run out of space, old egg cartons make the perfect substitute for storing your baubles, and you can wrap them up in tissue paper or wrapping paper to keep them safe.
And then comes the tree. If you have an artificial tree, this step might be a bit easier. But for those who have a real tree, it can be a messy process.
When transporting the tree from your home to the roof of your car, try wrapping it up in a towel or rubbish bag to keep pine needles from getting everywhere. But even the most careful will still need to do a good sweep.
Perfect Present Placements
Once all your Christmas decorations are away, you can move on to storing presents.
New clothes, shoes, or jewellery are always exciting presents, but now it’s time to decide where they’re going to go.
You want to maximise your wardrobe space, especially if you have a lot of new stuff coming in. Standard wardrobe solutions, while functional, are built for the masses, so they don’t fit your individual needs.
Having a customised wardrobe allows you to use the space available to you effectively.
You will be able to match your wardrobe design to your wardrobe. You can have more hanging space or less hanging space, or built-in jewellery storage for those extra special Christmas gifts.
For your children, you can customise wardrobes with space for things like toy boxes that can be easily accessed and tucked away. Or have easy to use and kid-friendly sliding drawers.
If you feel like your storage space isn’t being used effectively and you know you are going to have more stuff coming in, take advantage of a consultation with one of our design experts at Innovative Interiors. They will work with you to create a customised storage solution for all your new and old holiday items.