With Halloween just around the corner, I started thinking about decorations.\u00a0 Although there are many holidays that you can have decorations for, we have three big ones close together over the next 3 months: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.\u00a0 I\u2019m certainly no Martha Stewart, but I do love putting out decorations to celebrate these and other occasions.\u00a0 This can create more work, more things to track and figure out what to do with \u2013 yet there are ways we can make this easier.<\/p>\n
One of the things with decorations is that they spend most of their time in storage.\u00a0 I have some seasonal decorations, and even those are in boxes 9 months out of each year.\u00a0 For holiday decorations it is even more time since we don\u2019t typically leave those out for much more than a month.<\/p>\n
To start with, those decorations need a dedicated box or bin just for themselves.\u00a0 It might be tempting to group more than one type together in a box, but this only adds to your work when it is time to use the box: whether to pull out or to put away those decorations. You might need only one, Easter or the 4th of July, often do not exceed one container.\u00a0 On the other hand, Christmas can often fill many containers!<\/p>\n
With Christmas and potentially other holidays if you have more than one box for, you can also separate types of decorations together within containers \u2013 like the tree ornaments going largely into one container and other d\u00e9cor items into another.<\/p>\n
It is helpful to label them or choose color coded bins for storage so you know which box you want when you go to get them and not need to open multiple ones to find the one(s) you are looking for.<\/p>\n
Since these decorations spend most of their time in storage, you also need to decide where you will keep them.\u00a0 Ideally you want the space to be relatively easy to access.\u00a0 If you store them in a hard to access area, it\u2019s more likely you\u2019ll procrastinate getting them out or putting them away.\u00a0 Considering that you don\u2019t use them that often, it is tempting for them to get buried amidst other things or stored out of the way in hard to reach areas.\u00a0 If you truly want to use them each year, you need make sure they are relatively easy to get to.<\/p>\n
It is also helpful if you decide when you want the decorations to be put out.\u00a0 We often think it\u2019s tacky to have Christmas decorations out before Thanksgiving or after the middle of January \u2013 or whatever your thoughts are on this.\u00a0 Figure out for yourself when you would like them to be put out, and then put some time into your schedule to do it.\u00a0 The same thing applies for putting them away \u2013 figure out when you want them boxed back up by and schedule time for it.\u00a0 I recommend deciding and putting it into the schedule as a repeating event.\u00a0 That way, even if I\u2019m distracted, my schedule reminds me that it\u2019s time to put out\/away the decorations.<\/p>\n
The final step is to evaluate whether any of the decorations need to be purged.\u00a0 Unfortunately damages happen, and as you are putting them out or putting them away at the end of the holiday, it is the perfect time to get rid of some that have outlived their purpose.<\/p>\n
If you create specific containers for the different holidays, find an out of the way yet still easily accessible place to store those containers, and schedule time for yourself to pull them out and to put them away, and each time cull some items you no longer need \u2014 your decorations will perform their duty perfectly \u2013 to brighten your home and help you celebrate the holidays in the ways you choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Halloween is the beginning of three months of heavy decoration time with Thanksgiving and then Christmas following and decorations can become a burden. Find out how to eliminate that stress with 4 steps to control your decorations and help you celebrate the holidays in the ways you envision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5,4,17],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidayhelp","tag-household","tag-routines","tag-spaces"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-2Y","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}