Behind the Scenes: Christmas Decorating
I have been busy…busy hauling out the holly and Christmas decorations :-) I have been preparing the house for the holidays and my Christmas Home tour post that is scheduled for next Wednesday.
Many of you have asked me what I do with all the decor I write about – how I store it all. I thought I would share a little bit about that with you today as I put the finishing touches on my Christmas Decorating.
I worked for many years in retail display where it was my job to have to find ways to store all the decorations on a daily basis. I learned a lot about the best and easiest way to do it. Square or rectangular boxes that stack, labeling, and hanging items from the ceiling are a few ways I store decorative items in my house.
Most of the decorative seasonal decor I use goes to my basement. Goodbye fall decor…you are on your way… down. I place these items in boxes and clear plastic bins that are stackable until I need them next year. I hang some bags and odd shaped items from hooks in the ceiling. Each one gets a label of some sort.
The basement is storage central and a total mess! It is my January project to get it cleaned up again. I will show you more in a post about the purge and clean-up then.
Use plastic see-through bins to store decorative items. These allow you to easily stack and see what is in each at a glance. They also keep items safe from moisture.
My Christmas decor gets stored in the attic. It’s not as accessible, but we only need it once each year and have worked out a process to bring it down fairly quickly.
I usually use the guest room as my staging area, but this year I decided to use the open space in my new fitness room. (It used to be my oldest daughter’s bedroom) I can still use my Pilates Reformer, so I am a happy camper getting to spread out the decorations to see what I will use this year.
I like to change things up a little each year, but some of the items have to be part of the decor or I will hear it from my daughters since they like to see the items they grew up with displayed.
I learned just how much what I do each year to transform the house for Christmas means to them.
About 13 years ago my appendix decided to rupture in early December and I was in the hospital for a week. The entire time I was there, I kept thinking I would not have the energy to get the house decorated when I got home. Little did I know that my oldest who was in 10th grade at the time and was always at school when I decorated the house, took the task on all by herself as a surprise for me. She never actually saw me put the items up, but she sure had a mental note of where it went and how it looked in her head.
When I came home and walked into the house I was greeted by not only Christmas music playing and cookies baking in the oven, but the house was decorated top to bottom, EXACTLY how I always did it with every detail in place.
It brought tears to my eyes to see how she had tied bows perfectly to the garlands, the kissing ball hung just so from the foyer light, the stockings lined up along the mantel, candles set out with greenery, the foyer table…she had every detail in place just the way I always did it.
It became apparent to me at that moment that decorating the house for Christmas mattered and is worth the time and effort each and every year. What I thought I was only doing for myself really made my family happy, too.
So even though it takes some effort, I decorate my house to make it festive for the holidays for all to enjoy. I don’t decorate every room, just the first floor. The exterior of the house gets white lights, wreaths and candles in every window.
I worked at Nordstroms one Christmas and got these sturdy gold and silver coat boxes to use to hold items that are only used infrequently. Even though I haven’t used them in a few years I know that one of my daughters may like them someday. The gingerbread man box is from my parent’s house. It is old, but still sturdy. I keep all the Christmas cookie tins we use each year for the cookies we make in the box.
The boxes in this corner hold items for the tree – lights and ornaments. We have a lot. My daughters each have their own box of ornaments. The wood triangle against the wall is a decoration that Ed made when he was a child. He used a wood burning tool to draw Santa and his sleigh. It needs new lights, but is one of those decorations that make you smile and we’ll never part with.
If I was told I could only use one item stored in these boxes to decorate for the holidays, it would have to be the electric candles in each window. The house is not Christmas without these in place.
Besides the tree, the rest of the decor is made up of:
- greenery
- ornaments
- candles
- ribbons
Once the decor is down from the attic, I like to spread it all out on the floor so that I can easily see and then pick and choose what and how I will use each item. Not everything in these boxes makes it into the decor each year.
I buy most of my candles at IKEA. They have large and small tea lights as well as unscented pillar style. I buy battery operated tea lights at Michaels.
This is where I bring what I am going to use – my studioffice. When I am in decorating mode – it looks like this – a creative mess, but one that I function well in.
Once the decorations are up, I will stack the bins and boxes in the corner of the room until it is time to take the decorations down in early January. I usually organize and clean out what I don’t need in each box before they go back up to the attic.
The house usually looks pretty bare after the holidays. This is when I go to my basement to shop for something to use to add some life back to the decor. Since it is a slow time of year, it is also when I try to tackle getting the basement organized. Trips to Walmart and Target are always needed to get more or bigger see-through bins as I reorganize the space. One of these years I am going to do it so well that it will never ever become a mess again. :-)
How do you store and organize your holiday decorations? If you have any tips, please share them in the comments.
If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy the easy to follow DIY Decorating Tutorials and Creative Ideas on my blog, In My Own Style.com Republishing this article in full or in part is a violation of Copyright law @2009-2014, all rights reserved
