Clutter Video Tip: Organizing Holiday Decorations, Part 2

http://www.ClutterDiet.com Get organized with home organizing tips from professional organizers at The Clutter Diet. Decking the halls with boughs of holly will certainly leave you feeling jolly. But taking down the tree, the stockings, and the lights is such a chore that it can feel fa-la-la la-la la-la-lame. Decorating and undecorating for the holidays is a big time investment; so, it's important to use that time as effectively and efficiently as possible. In today's video Lorie Marrero is undecking her halls and giving you some strategies to use while you troll the ancient Yule tide carol. Follow us in merry measure and we'll show you how to ease your stress level and save you precious time... These Clutter Video Tips are posted frequently here on our clutterdiet organizing channel. You can search Twitter for #ClutterVideoTip also to find comments on our organizing tips. Lorie Marrero is the creator of ClutterDiet.com and the author of The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life. Lorie also serves as the national spokesperson for Goodwill Industries International and ambassador of the Donate Movement.

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Transcript:
Hi. I'm Lorie Marrero and today's Clutter Video Tip is Part 2 on Organizing Your Holiday Decorations. I want to share with you an approach that you can use for a lot of different kinds of organizing projects, and that is centralizing. So what we've done is we have de-Christmased the whole house [POP] and we've brought everything into this one room -- in this case it's the dining room and specifically the dining table. And what that does is give you really fast results in the rest of the house, and it also makes it feel a little more manageable to see everything in one place and sort it out and get it stored away. [POP]

So this is when you want to get out the red and green containers that we talked about in Part 1, and also if you took photos of your finished decorated spaces, like we also talk about in Part 1, it's time to print those out and put those photos in with the bins that correspond to those decorations so you have a little bit of a guide next year.

I want to talk also about a few products that people don't know exist maybe that would be helpful in this process. A lot of people are trying to store their artificial trees in the original [POP] cardboard box that they came in and they're either falling apart or they're having a hard time fitting all of the branches back into them, so these are Christmas tree storage bags. They come in this type of canvas material, also a plastic green material. They hold up to, I think, a nine-foot tree. You can also put large lawn ornament decorations or something in these too. But this is a much better solution. They cost about $10, $15. So it's a really good investment to protect your tree, make it a little easier on yourself.

I also want to remind you right now, pull your candles out and make sure that those candles don't end up in the hot attic. You want to make sure you store these [POP] in a more temperature-controlled area of your house.

So another thing people might not know about is ornament bins. So these bins have stackable layers of these cardboard dividers and in this case I have some ornaments that are a little larger than the divider spaces. So what I do is just pull every other one out and that way I can store the bigger ornaments in them.

Something else people ask me about a lot is holiday light storage. And I want to share with you my one dollar solution for that. These are called extension cord wraps and they are available at any home improvement center. They literally cost 98 cents. So you can wrap your lights around these. You can also use them to wrap up any long garlands or anything else you have for your decorating. And that is a quick one dollar solution that will save you some money and some heartache with the tangles next year.

So speaking of next year, think about it when you are decking the halls, remember that they also have to be un-decked. So I know we talk about it in Part 1, paying attention and taking a little time to notice what family traditions are the most special and important to you and your kids and really focusing more on that next year, and maybe you can scale down a little bit on some of the decorating and some of the things that don't matter quite as much and save yourself a little bit of time and energy for the holidays next season.

Happy New Year, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

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[clutterdiet]

@M2brSaA Goodwill's mission is to provide job related services and opportunities to those who have barriers to employment. The revenue from the stores funds this mission. Many people don't realize all that Goodwill does to help people find jobs-- both within their own stores and offices and out in the community at large. I'm sure you can find a charity whose mission is to clothe the poor and give your clothes to them, but that is not what Goodwill is intended for.

[M2brSaA]

When I donate clothes to Goodwill, I feel bad that I can't just give my clothes to the poor for free. I wish Goodwill didn't sell my clothes. I rather if someone needed clothes they could just have them and save their money for food.