Great tips and tricks for storing Christmas decorations

Christmas decor storage ideas and tricks that will make decorating next year easier!

I’ve discovered some great holiday storage solutions over the years that have helped keep your Christmas decor better organized.

These methods made pulling out the decor for next Christmas more efficient. These little tips save my sanity each November when the holiday decor comes out and when I put it away for the year.

Overall, I find that packing holiday decorations is faster and easier than setting them up! Am I the only one? I quite like this process, it’s relaxing to clean the house and simplify everything for the new year.

Here are ways to organize your Christmas decor and some tips I’ve discovered along the way!

1. Name your decor for next year

My first tip is to label as much as you can – especially things you put in the same place every year.

I’ve found over the years that labeling the light strands I use in specific areas helps a lot!:

I name any place that uses more than one strip of lights — whether indoors or outdoors. So, when I take them out, I know exactly how many bushes or trees this set of lights is covering.

I also label them inside, like the threads on the staircase wreath. This way I’m not trying to figure out how many people I used the previous year.

I store them away with items that need a remote, like the wreath on our stairs. I just keep them connected to the thread of light.

If you have more than one set of these remotes, you know the fun of trying to figure out which one goes with which remote. 😉

2. Store your trees upright!

Next is Christmas tree stocking! We have… oh, a few artificial trees. 😉

It’s been a dream of mine my entire adult life to store all of my Christmas trees upright – and not remove a single thing from them every year.

Well in this house, my dreams came true, at least for a couple of trees! We have a storage room in the basement that has enough space to store two of our Christmas trees upright.

Just place it on top of the tree and place branches here and there – it zips shut and locks too:

You may have to fluff it up a bit next year, but other than that everything stays in place!

I loved this cover so much, I went to buy another one, but it was sold out.

They’re made for nine-foot trees, so they’re plenty big for our seven- to eight-foot trees. It is so spacious that it is easy for you to pick up extra items and tie them down.

To carry it, one of us holds the top and the other the bottom. You’ll be surprised how much it stays in place!

We’ve stored a couple of our trees this way for years, and they look almost perfect when we discover them next holiday season. It saves a lot of time – you just need to have the space.

In fact, they don’t take up much more space than horizontal bags, all you have to do is get more vertical storage space.

3. Wrapping up Christmas lights

Storing Christmas lights can be a pain! If you don’t store them properly, they will be a mess and tangled when you take them out the following year.

I’ve found that the best way to store the lights is by wrapping them around something – in the past I’ve used pieces of cardboard boxes and just wrapped the lights around them.

It worked fine, but the cardboard was flimsy and didn’t hold up as well as I would like. Then I found these inexpensive light wire wrappers:

These have worked great so far! The handle on the side makes it very easy to carry and twist the lights around.

It is lightweight but holds a large number of lights easily:

Our outdoor lights have smaller LED bulbs, so if you are using standard or larger bulbs like C7 bulbs, you may want to use one of these light regulators for each light string.

4. Keep away the decor

I find it easier to organize my holiday decor boxes by similar items rather than by room.

So, for example, when I drag all the wreath down, every piece of it goes into one basket. Same for decorative pieces, stuffing, and soft items like socks, kitchen towels, etc.

To make it easier, I use the dining table (any central location will do!) and group all of my Christmas decor at the top into sections:

The only decor not present here is anything from the tree and the thick wreath.

But other than that I go around and collect everything and sort it on the table first.

Have you ever found Christmas decor here and there months later? This helps avoid that!

I find that I collect every last thing this way – no longer having to find random items throughout January and February! 😂

Then I can just grab each plastic container and fill them with similar items straight from the table. It makes the process of putting the decor away much faster!

5. A place designated for Christmas decor

For years we stored all of our Christmas decorations in our basement, but I realized after a few years that it was quite a chore to get them all upstairs (sometimes two trips).

Since then I have stored almost everything in our garages.

A few years ago, I was treated to new, clear storage containers for Christmas decor. You made me so happy!

Our old boxes were covered in paint or broken. I wasn’t sure how I would feel when I saw everything inside, I was worried it would look too messy.

But I like it:

I can’t even tell you how beautiful it is to see everything! I was going to tick every box, but decided not to once I had everything there. There’s really no need.

I did a serious purge of all our decor before putting everything back. I haven’t tried Christmas decor in years.

We now use more small boxes instead of the larger boxes we had in the past. It is very easy to carry smaller items:

We had similar wood shelves built to the ceiling in our last garage, and we loved them so much that we built them again on only our second day in this house!

Previously, this corner was a mix of random things, but I decided to make it seasonal. It’s mostly Christmas, but I have Halloween and 4th of July stuff in here too.

These are the plastic boxes I used – they all have handles that hold the lids on. Love it!

These boxes with locking lids are very similar and are a few dollars less.

Half of this wall is tree storage! Don’t you wish you could crush your Christmas trees as small as they are in the original box?:

Last year we started using these utility straps to tighten down each section of the tree while we stored it away. Not only does it make it as small as the first time you open a tree trunk, but it makes storing it much easier!

Plus, the tree pieces are easy to carry when tied with straps.

6. Solutions for smaller holiday decor

I hang most of my seasonal wreaths on the side of wooden shelves in the garage. I love being able to access them easily! For my Christmas wreaths, I use a wreath bag to store them on the shelves. The majority of our Christmas decorations are unbreakable, they are cheap plastic lights. For this reason, I don’t buy fancy storage boxes for decorations, I just stack them in boxes. Fragile ornaments are the last to be put away and placed on top. We never got a single break!

If you want more protection, you can use plastic cups to protect fragile jewelry!

I keep all my holiday wrapping paper in the garage too. Bows, ribbons, tissue paper and gift bags are placed in their own storage box. Rolls of wrapping paper are stored in this wrapping paper storage bag. It has room to keep small items like ribbons and gift cards on top too.

When I wrap gifts, I just grab the trash and the paper I need.

We designed these shelves to fit the large sections of our giant family room tree – if you build something similar, be sure to measure your boxes and then build your shelves so you can stack several boxes on each one.

Are you doing anything specific regarding your holiday storage that will make next year easier for you? These tips help me a lot – especially permanent tree covers!