Free Up Closet Space By Stowing Your Holiday Decorations In A Storage Unit
It's common for families to have a closet full of holiday decorations. They're taken out for Christmas, used to decorate your home for a month, and then they are taken down and put back in the closet for an entire year. Since you only use them once a year, holiday decorations are a perfect candidate to be put in a storage unit — freeing up some much-needed closet space. If you want to find out how to store your holiday decorations correctly, read on.
Christmas Lights
Many families have spent hours of frustration untangling Christmas lights that were carelessly thrown into a storage box. Christmas lights tend to tangle up naturally, so it's very important to store them properly after Christmas is over.
After the holidays, carefully take down your Christmas lights and avoid tangling them up. If your outdoor lights are wet, leave them inside for a while until they completely dry out before you store them.
Loop each set of lights into a coil shape and then secure the coil together using twist ties. Lay the coiled lights on the bottom of a storage box, separating them with wads of newspaper. Place a layer of newspaper over the Christmas lights, and then put more Christmas light coils on top. You don't want the coils of lights to touch each other because the lights themselves tend to act like hooks that attach sets of lights together. Next Christmas, you won't have to worry about untangling them.
Christmas Ornaments
Christmas ornaments are fairly fragile, so they're best stored in a box that's filled with packing peanuts. If you have Christmas ornaments that are family treasures, such as ones that were hand-painted or ones that have photos on them, it's best to wrap them in an acid-free paper in order to protect them. While the acid-free paper is fairly expensive, it won't discolor the Christmas ornaments. Your non-heirloom Christmas ornaments can be wrapped in inexpensive newspaper for protection.
Artificial Christmas Tree
If you have the box that your artificial Christmas tree came in, then the best way to store it is to disassemble it and store it in the original box. Otherwise, you can leave it fully assembled and store it in a tree storage bag, which has carrying handles that make it easy to move the tree into storage. If you don't want to spend money on a tree storage bag, however, then simply disassemble your tree, place all of the disassembled parts into separate garbage bags and then store them in a plastic bin.
Outside Decorations
Like artificial Christmas trees, your outside decorations are best stored in the box that they came in. This is a good reason to always hang on to your boxes. Again, if you don't have the originals, you store them in the same way as you would an artificial Christmas tree — disassemble them, wrap each individual piece in a garbage bag and then place them in a bin.
Storing your holiday items in the manner described above will greatly reduce the risk that they're damaged while you're moving them. It also makes it much easier to simply open up the boxes and redecorate your home the next time Christmas comes around. If you need a place to store your holiday items after Christmas, rent a storage unit, buy some boxes, garbage bags, and plastic bins and clear the Christmas clutter out of your home.