Store Christmas Decorations, step by step

Q: Can you post about how you store all of your Christmas decorations? Since you rotate the ornaments on your tree each year and have a large tree and a smaller tabletop one as well as exterior decor and mantel stuff I wondered how much space it all takes up. I have an attic like you, which I think is where you store yours, but I do not truly have a system so it feels chaotic. Any pointers for getting mine under control? Thanks! – Meghan

A: We in fact get this question a lot, so you are not the only one wondering, Meghan! We store it all in a 6 foot by 5 foot area in our attic (our attic is much larger than that, but that is the footprint that everything in the photo below takes up). We stack things as you see here, and we have labeled each bin with what is inside thanks to photoshop, so hopefully it is fairly self explanatory.

The concept of storing “like with like” is in short my jam. So I think that is the theme of this picture. All of the plugs and cords and window candles go in one bin, all of the tabletop stuff goes in two matching green bins, etc. We simply try to keep things that go together, together. It truly helps us know where things are without feeling like we are simply shoving things in random bins and forgetting what is what.

For a little more detail, here is how we pack up the big tree in the dining room. We remove everything on the tree and carefully place it in one of these long, shallow plastic bins. We have another one of these in the attic with all of the out-of-rotation ornaments that we did not use this year (like the faux lemons and orange ornaments from this tree back in 2009) although many things get reused nearly every year (like the white/silver ornaments as well as the soft pink ones in this bin, which have been on many former trees as well as this year’s version).

Between those two shallow bins, we contain nearly all of our ornaments (all of them except for the ones on our small tabletop tree, which we will get to in a second). And since they are only about 5″ deep, they are quite straightforward to stack without taking up much floor space. If we have a beloved breakable ornament we will simply wrap it in newspaper before packing it away, but most of the time they simply get laid in like the ones you see above.

After storing ornaments using this put-them-all-in-plastic-bins method for over five years we have in fact never broken a single one in storage or in transport. So I am brave sufficient to say that it works for us. We simply quite carefully put the bins away in the attic one time each year (and carefully pull it out the next year) so it is not like it is banging around in there and constantly being shaken/moved (in which case we’d certainly wrap them up a lot more to avoid breakage). Oh and here is here is how we unpack the tabletop tree:

Same basic premise. All of those special, mixed & matched ornaments go into this smaller tupperware bin. The especially delicate ones get wrapped in newspaper, but most of them simply drop right in. Then we break it out each year, add new items to it if we’d like, and remove anything that we no longer enjoy. It helps to use a bin that is related to the size of the tree to keep us from hoarding too many ornaments that could never fit on that cute little tree of ours (we will either donate/pass down/yard sale older ornaments that are not as special as the new ones – like the ones Clara makes us – or move them to being stored in the two bigger bins for our full sized tree if we think we might use them there instead).

Here is how we store tabletop stuff slash mantel stuff. Freestanding items like our wooden reindeer or feather trees do not get bagged, but the ones that fit into large bins live in there, and we stash smaller items in large ziplock bags first, with a label for where they go before dropping them in. For example, these are all ornaments that we group for tabletop displays like the cake stand in our kitchen, the glass based lamp on the console, etc).

Then the bags simply slip into the green bins (where all of our other tabletop/mantel stuff lives, like the wooden reindeer from our Christmas dinner centerpiece, a few smaller feather trees, our faux wrapped gifts for the mantel etc). That way they are all grouped in a pleasant intuitive way.

So there you have it. How we store all of our holiday stuff. How do you folks store your ornaments? Do you use plastic bins? Original boxes? Those little cardboard dividers? I bet there are a ton of things that work. Share and share alike.

Update: You can check out all of our go-to holiday decor finds here – many of which are under $15!