Clutter Control and Organizing Solutions

Just as a quickie, I wanted to list a few storage tips for those holiday ornaments. I have always recommended buying a container specifically made for ornaments, because it seriously helps keep them safe and organized. However, if you don’t have one, and even if you do, here are a few ideas that I have found to work.

First, save all packaging that the original ornament came in. Storing the ornament in its original box, with its original plastic wrap or bubble wrap, is a great way to be sure the ornament stays safe. You can then place these boxes inside a large storage container and know that the following year they will come out undamaged and ready to go on the tree.

Second, always be sure to remove the ornament hangers from your ornaments when you put them into storage. The hooks can rattle and scrape up against ornaments, causing chips, scratches and other problems with cherished ornaments.

Third, if an ornament comes with a way to hang it, without adding anything - use that method. It will make less work for you at the end of the holiday season when you are removing all the ornament hooks.

Fourth, if you have a priceless ornament, and you use an artificial tree, consider bending the branch that the ornament rests on. The same goes for heavy ornaments. Just bend up the end of the branch it hangs on, to ensure the ornament won’t fall off and break. Usually you cannot even tell that the branch is bent, so give it a try and see if it is noticeable. Trust me, that has saved many a priceless ornament from meeting its demise at the hands of our cat.

Do you have any great ornament tips?

Many people have already taken down their Christmas and other holiday decorations, but not everyone has. Because of that, I thought this might be a great time to post some tips for holiday storage and organization. If you have anything to add, or you do something that might be useful to readers, please be sure and leave a comment. Thanks!

1. Clear is Best. If you need to storage multiple decorations, and several types - clear storage is usually the way to go. This way you can see at a glance what is inside the box.
2. Store by Color. Maybe I’m a bit eccentric, but I store my holiday decorations in a color coordinated manner. Green tops are Christmas decorations. Blue tops are decorations that we use for the Winter months. Orange tops are Halloween.  Red tops are Valentines Day. Yellow tops are Easter and Spring decorations. And I painted a red lid with stripes and a large blue square to be for Fourth of July. I also store them in the order that I need them on a basement shelf.
3. All containers in a storage area, work better when they are the same size. Even if you only have two items you use to decorate for Valentines day, you have two options - either purchase a same-size-as-all-the-other-holidays container and store those items in there anyway, or combine holidays that are close together and put them in one container together.
4. Label anything you cannot immediately see. If you choose to use containers that are not clear, tape an index card or piece of paper to the outside of the container and record the contents of each container.
5. Small containers are a great way to separate items inside a large container.Those lids don’t matter in color, but being able to place items that are contained inside one large container makes organizing a much easier chore.

I own a special container for my wreath, and several special containers for wrapping paper. (Christmas is stored together, Birthday is stored together and all other occasions are stored together). We also have a separate wrapping paper storage container that we put our reusable gift bags in and all of our tissue paper.

So what do you do to store your decorations? Do you own any specialty containers?

I’m so sorry I was on hiatus for a week or so, but with the holidays, and my daughter got sick - life just got in the way.

I don’t know why this year is different for me, but I was actually happy to take down all the decorations this year and be done with them. Usually I procrastinate but this year, the mess was driving me mad. Piles of gift boxes and bags, empty boxes of all shapes and sizes along with their insides (you know - the plastic pieces, bags and styrofoam), trash bags full of wrapping paper, tissue paper and bubble wrap and it never felt like it was going to end. Did you feel the same?

I’m happy to be on my way to a cleaner more organized house, but I’m not there just yet. The kids go back to school tomorrow so that will make a huge difference - my only wish is that I had all five days of the week to get back in order. I guess I kind of do, because today I have required all of the kids to clean their rooms, to walk around the house and remove anything that belongs to them from any room that isn’t theirs, and whatever is left tomorrow - is going in the trash! LOL I know, mean mom. But my life is so disorganized, and I feel so stressed from that, I just need my world back to more organized.

What are your goals for 2009? Please make sure to check back everyday this week for posts that include tips for every room to your house. Yes, some days I plan to post more than once. So check back and be sure and leave me a comment. I really would like to be posting about things people actually want help with! Have a great week!

Every year it seems like our ornaments multiply. I am not sure how that happens, because honestly the kids only get one ornament each on Christmas eve, so that’s five new ornaments to find a new home for as we are putting the decorations away. And only my two youngest make them at school anymore. But it seems that at the end of the season, we have twenty or more to find a slot for.

We have purchased the ornament storage boxes that Wal-mart sells.  We got a great deal for a pack of six from their online site. The reason we did this, is because having five kids, we found it easier to store the ornaments by child, rather than all together. This way, each child takes their container and that is what they decorate the tree with. You can get ornament storage boxes anywhere, but it is important to look for larger boxes so that you don’t have to keep expanding and buying more. The smaller containers don’t hold much and you will find yourself upgrading eventually. This is the best method of storage we’ve found and they stack nicely on top of each other in a corner of our Christmas decoration storage.

How do you store your ornaments?