I absolutely love the Christmas Holiday Season. There are so many activities and events that occur at this special time of the year. I take special care in preparing our home with lights, decorations candles and homemade goodies. We place lights on the out side of our home and decorate two live trees in the house along with several miniature trees. I also have two extensive holiday village that I place out. With all the decorations and dishware Christmas storage becomes quite an issue. I have found through the years that the greater amount of time I put into proper Christmas storage the better results I get.
We have an attic area that is formed in our bedroom due to the steep pitch of our roof. This area is about 30 feet long and 3 feet wide. We found large plastic bins to use for Christmas storage. The bins come in a variety of shapes, sizes and with varied features. The attic area gets very warm in the summer and cold in the winter so the things that are stored there cannot be affected by heat. I have found that on some ornaments that have glitter and other embellishments glued on them the glue may harden as a result of the temperature fluxes. For this reason the Christmas storage that I choose for the tree decorations are flat plastic boxes that can be slid under the bed in the spare bedrooms. For other items, like my village pieces the temperatures do not impact them. I try to keep as many of the original boxes and packaging for each item as possible. This does increase the space I need for Christmas storage, but it also prolongs the looks of the items. Also the boxes can be stacked neatly inside of the plastic bins without concern of breakage.
I do decorate in stages. The villages and the outdoor lights are put out the day after Thanksgiving. When I am putting away the Christmas storage I arrange the tubs so that the ones that are needed first are in the front. Each bin is clearly marked with permanent marker regarding what is in it. I also have numbered the bins so if my husband is putting them away he can arrange them numerically and I will have what I need first closest to the door.
Some items I dispose of at the end of each season. The small lights that are placed on the tree are very inexpensive and bulky to store. Also it seems that it takes hours to untangle the light strands each year. The small lights no longer are placed in Christmas storage; they are donated for events at the local school, and new ones are purchased each year.
If you take the time to organize your holiday items and pack them carefully the decorations and collectables will last for years. Due to my proper Christmas storage I have several items from my mother that will be passed on to my children.
