I love to decorate my house for Christmas! I love to get out my decorations and scatter them around the house so that most of the common areas have some kind of decoration. So many of these decorations hold beautiful memories for me. Some my children made through the years, some I received as gifts, some I purchased as reminders of places we traveled, but most of my ornaments are needlepoints that I made. I tried to add one or more needlepoint ornament every year!
I even get out the children’s read aloud holiday books and display them on a table in my living room.
Since decorating for the holidays can be a stressful process I thought I’d share my strategies for getting my house ready for the holidays without stressing!
1. Take out all the boxes of decorations
2. Put them in altogether in one spot – decorate from that spot. This way you avoid scattering boxes all over your home and unnecessary clutter.
3. Think about the places in your home you want to decorate (living room, dining room, family room, entry..)
4. Decide when you want to have your decorating completed.
5. Start looking through your decorations.
6. Are there any that you no longer love? (if yes, donate them now! People are looking for decorations!) Here’s a picture of the decorations that I’m giving away this year.
7. Are there any that don’t fit your decorating scheme this year? (if yes, pack them up and put them away. You do not have to use every decoration every year!)
8. As you go about decorating your home, put away the tabletop decorations you keep out currently in the box you use for your holiday decorations.
9. If you have special holiday mugs or dishes pack away your everyday mugs or dishes as you get them out.
10. Now that you’re finished sit back and admire your creations! Take pictures so that you can recall what you put where in case you want to create a similar decorating scheme next year.
I hope these tips help you as you go about doing your decorating for the holidays!
I have been trying to encourage my clients to decorate early in December so they can donate the decorations they no longer want to thrift stores. Some stores will not accept Christmas decoration donations in January.
Very good ideas. I seem to decorate differently every year which makes it fun for me to be creative. I do get all the tubs of decorations out and put them in the living room and work from there. We spend most of our time In the family room so if the tubs are out for more than a day or two they don’t bother anyone. I also store the everyday things in the tubs to be replaced later. You get your love of Christmas decorating from grandma and me☺️
Great tips! I’ve always put away some of my every day mugs, glasses, etc. to make room for my Christmas ones. But a few years ago I also started putting away my every day decor too and it was amazing how much less cluttered our home felt! Now I can really enjoy my Christmas decorations.
Like Seana and you, I always pack decorative items away during the holidays in my holiday storage boxes to make space for the Christmas items on the shelves, but it never occurred to me to do the same thing with dishes, mugs, etc. Great idea!
Great tips! I like the tips to take out all the boxes. We do that every year except this year. You see, we are getting a walkway put in so we had to do minimal decorating, so I went through the boxes as I handed them to my husband to take out of the attic. It worked nicely, and I was able to put back all the boxes in one day.
I often pack “regular” decorative items into the box from which I have taken the holiday pieces. This makes it easy to restore order after the holiday season. Great tips!
Your tree and home look so warm and inviting. I can imagine you decorating for the holidays and enjoying every aspect of it. We don’t celebrate Christmas, but I’ve had the joy of helping many clients organize and decorate for the holidays. It definitely helps to reassess each year as things get taken out or put away. It makes the following year that much easier.