Smart Home Organization Hacks for Seasonal Items

Shannon Quinn - December 19, 2019
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Smart Home Organization Hacks for Seasonal Items
Photo: If you have a label maker, the holidays are a great time to use it for organization. Credit: Shutterstock
After New Years Eve, there is likely going to be a lot of cleaning to do. Credit: Pexels

17. Clean as You Go

Holiday decorations are usually up for at least one month. This means that underneath your decorations, you’re most likely going to find dust. Instead of waiting until after you’re done putting your decorations away, clean up your surfaces as soon as you carry your items to the designated Christmas decoration pile that we mentioned earlier. The idea to stop and clean every time you pick up your decor might seem tedious to some of you, but it’s actually the quickest way to accomplish your entire project.

Clean as you remove the Christmas decor from your space. Credit: Pexels

Have your vacuum on hand fully charged and ready to go whenever you find glitter or pine needles falling on the floor. Prep the washing machine so that you can wash anything made of fabric like a tree skirt or tablecloths. And have your paper towels and disinfectant spray standing by so that you can wipe down surfaces right away. This way, the entire project ends when the items are put in boxes and brought to the garage or attic. If you do it the opposite way, you’ll put your items away and feel a sense of accomplishment, only to remember that you still need to go vacuum and wipe down the entire house.

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This tube was made out of cardboard. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses on YouTube

16. Create Russian Doll Style Cardboard Tubes For Your Lights

A YouTuber who goes by the name of Glue Guns & Roses suggested this next great idea. She took pieces of cardboard and rolled them up into a cylinder. Then, she created gradually smaller cylinder tubes. Then, she wrapped her lights around the tubes and used tape to hold them down. Once the tubes were all assembled, all she needed to do was stack them inside of one another, like a stack of Russian dolls.

These light tubes fit inside one another. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses on YouTube

If you would rather buy something from a store, you can do this same trick by using cardboard poster tubes from your local office supply store. However, if you received a lot of deliveries from Amazon this year, it’s likely that you will already have the materials lying around your house for free. This is a great way to recycle, and create something useful out of your trash.

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This is a Dollar Tree paper towel holder connected to the wall using hooks. Credit: Glue Gun and Roses

15. Use a Dollar Tree Paper Towel Holder to Store Wreaths

Dollar Tree sells a metal paper towel holder that usually sits on your countertop. These are popular if you live in an apartment and can’t install a paper towel roll under the counter. But these metal objects are good for so much more! All you need to do is bend the metal so that it stays straight on one end, and voila- you have a DIY wreath rack for just $1.

These wreaths are hanging on a garage wall. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses on YouTube

Next, hang your metal piece on the wall using command hooks. Once it is securely in place, you can slide on several wreaths on one hook. This is also great for garland and anything else that you may have around the house during Christmas time. On the YouTube channel Glue Guns and Roses, she shows how she uses this hack, because she puts a wreath on every window of her townhouse. In her case, she truly needed an entire space on her closet wall dedicated to wreaths.

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Glitter is very difficult to clean. Credit: LovetoKnow

14. Use a Wet Paper Towel or Lint Roller to Remove Glitter

Sometimes, glitter is so sticky that you might not be able to remove it from your surfaces even after vacuuming or trying to sweep up. It’s important not to let this go, because glitter can get in the eyes and mouth of your children or pets. A great cleaning hack is to use a wet paper towel to wipe out the glitter. You could use all purpose spray, but you don’t need any particular cleaner to accomplish this. Simply using water on the paper towel is enough for the glitter to stick to it so that you can lift it up easily.

A lint roller can be a great backup option for cleaning. Credit: Mum in the Madhouse

If you are experiencing litter sticking to fabric, this might be a different story. If you don’t want the material to get wet, use a large piece of tape or a lint roller, instead. And if there is ever a scenario where you have a lot of glitter to deal with, make sure you wear protective eyewear before shaking out a rug or anything outside. You don’t want anything stuck in your eyeball!

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Ornaments like these will shed glitter. Credit: Target

13. Put Glitter Ornaments in a Ziplock Bag

A very common problem is that glitter falls off your decor items and sticks to absolutely everything. If you have a plastic tote, it’s very likely that the bottom has a lining of glitter. Some people might not mind having a lot of extra glitter and their life. But in reality, it’s a huge hassle to clean up oh, and it might stick to your other objects that were in the same storage box. A very simple way to stop this from happening is to put anything glittery inside of a ziplock bag before you put it away. This way, the glitter will all stay inside of the plastic bag even if it sheds. You can simply pour that excess glitter into a garbage can instead of vacuuming or sweeping it up later.

These glittery ornaments are all stored in a large ziploc bag. Credit: Elle Clair Inspired

This past year, I also used one quart and gallon Ziplock bags to keep similar ornaments together. For example, Target came out with a huge line of felt ornaments. These don’t need to be wrapped to the same way that glass ornament does. So I was able to keep all of the felt ornaments together in a ziplock bag. This makes it easy to find all the similar ornaments at once instead of digging through a box to find all of them.

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A handmade ornament like this may eventually get thrown away. Credit: Girl in the Garage

12. Write Dates on the Back of Your Children’s Ornaments

One of the greatest parts of being a parent during the holidays is experiencing the magic of Christmas with your children. When they go to school, it’s likely that they are making homemade ornaments to bring back for you. Obviously, we want these on our trees so that we can look at what children have accomplished. However, sometimes it’s easy to forget what year they made it, or what grade it was in. This is why it’s always a good idea to use a Sharpie to write the date and the name of your child on the back of the ornament.

Write the date on the back of these ornaments. Credit: The Spruce

If you decide to retire your Christmas ornaments, you can always take them and place them inside of a scrapbook along with other mementos from that year of school. Other parents want to quietly throw away an ornament that is falling apart, especially if it was only made of popsicle sticks and construction paper. As long as the date is written on there, you can make the decision based on how much time has passed. If it has been several years since the child made the ornament, it’s not likely that they will remember or miss it.

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Trees are very affordable when they go on clearance. Credit: The Krazy Coupon Lady

11. Consider Purchasing a Tree That’s Easier to Assemble

Most families purchase an artificial Christmas tree once, and then hold on to it for years. However, if you find that you lack the motivation to put your tree up or put it away, it could be because your tree is too difficult to assemble. During a sale like Black Friday or after-Christmas clearance, take a look at your tree options, and consider buying something easier for next year. For example, my parents have a Christmas tree where it’s necessary to place every single branch onto a metal pole. Every branch was color coded depending on its length. Over the years, the color coding rubbed off, so it took hours to figure out how to put the tree together. Once it was assembled, everyone was too exhausted to do anything else. So it was always a 2-day process.

There are a lot of Christmas trees on the market to choose from. Credit: Balsalm Hill

As you can imagine, my parent’s tree was a nightmare to put up and take down. In 2020, I felt that life was stressful enough already without worrying about the tree. So I took advantage of the Black Friday sales and spent $100 on a brand new tree at Michaels Crafts. (If I had waited until after Christmas, this same tree was only $40.) This new tree only took 10 minutes to assemble. Since it was pre-lit, there was no need to string lights. And since it was a “skinny” tree, it was easier to hang fewer ornaments to get the job done. When it was time to put it away, everything fit into just one box, and the whole process took about an hour. It was so easy compared to previous years, I’m never going back.

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Christmas tree bags from Dollar General. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses on YouTube

10. Go to Dollar General For the Clearance Tree Tote To Make it Easy to Carry

A lot of people like to save the original cardboard box that an artificial tree came in, and reuse it every year. However, this causes issues in a few different ways. As the years go on, boxes fall apart. They are also a lot more clunky, and take two people to bring them up into the attic and carry them downstairs or out of the garage. An easier solution to the problem is to buy a tree tote bag.

Three red Christmas tree bags in a garage. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

It’s possible to buy a tree tote bag online at any time of year. But if you’re lucky, you can find them at Dollar General. Their tree bags go on clearance every year, and are reduced from $8 to just 25 cents. If you buy them on clearance, it’s very easy for you to pick up enough tree totes for all of the trees you may have in the attic. Once they are packed away in these totes, it becomes a lot easier to carry them out to your garage or attic on your own. It also saves space compared to keeping them in boxes.

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Storage bags available at Dollar Tree. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

9. Large Storage Bags From Dollar Tree Help Organize Decor

Many of you out there will have probably heard of these large storage bags, because they are typically used when traveling. A lot of the brands end up on the “as seen on TV” aisle of department stores. But did you know that they are sold at Dollar Tree? Some of these bags even come with handles, which makes it even easier to pick him up and move them as needed. These extra large bags can be great for storing smaller items like ornaments and bits of decor. With plastic bags, it makes it easy to divide non-breakable ornaments in different teams or colors, so they are subdivided into the same tote. Since these bags have handles, they can also be hung on a command hook in the closet, if you’re working with a very small storage space in an apartment.

This storage tub has ornaments sub-divided by the large plastic bags. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

On the YouTube channel Glue Guns and Roses, she shows how she uses one of these bags to store her Chirstmas themed pillow cases. Around the holiday season, she takes off her normal pillow cases and stores them in one of these bags. Then, they go into a trunk in her living room that she doubles as a coffee table and storage. This is a great example of how you can re-think how to cleverly hide your decor in the room where it’s meant to be used, rather than assuming that everything must go into the attic.

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Many families have such large ornament collections, they never use them all. Credit: Pexels

8. Every Year, Consider if Any Ornaments You Need to Get Rid Of

Christmas is a very sentimental time for most people, so the suggestion that you should throw away some of your ornaments could be a shock to some of you. However, you have to admit that almost everyone has those ornaments that are so old and raggedy that they stay in the box for years without ever hanging on the tree anymore. If you forgot something existed in the first place, will you really ever miss it? And is that old ornament serving you in any way? If the answer is “no”, it might be better to let it go, and make room for something new.

It may be time to sort through your ornaments. Credit: Pexels

Some people work with “the 3 year rule”. If you haven’t used that ornament in 3 years, you should consider throwing it away, or donating it. If you feel emotionally attached to family ornaments that you don’t want to use, consider taking photos and texting them to your siblings. They will likely have the same fond memories that you do, and might be willing to use those decorations in their own home. Believe it or not, you can also sell ornaments on eBay. This works especially well if you have Hallmark ornaments, or any characters that may be collectable. By selling your unwanted ornaments, you might make enough money to buy something else you really want.

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This is a dessert themed tree. Credit: Grace Monroe Home

7. Divide Ornaments Into Themes

Some people like to go all-out for Christmas and have multiple trees in their house. This brings a lot of cheer to the home no matter what room you happen to be in. Once you go down the path of multiple trees in your life, you’ll inevitably end up with several different themed ornaments. One of my favorite Christmas home tours to watch is by Laura from the Garden Answer YouTube channel. She has several small “skinny” trees in every room of the house with themes like snowmen, The Nutcracker, forest animals, and more.

This house has a nautical themed corner. Credit: The Spruce

Personally, I have several themes too. My largest collections are nautical, food, and travel. Just this past year, I ran into the issue of attempting to put up a “food” themed tree in the kitchen, only to realize that I couldn’t find enough ornaments. It turns out that a lot of my themed ornaments were in a pink tote that was labeled incorrection, but I didn’t find them until January. In order to solve this issue, I really need to take all of my ornaments and divide them up by theme, label them, and store them so it’s easy to find next year.

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In a small apartment, this laundry basket may be just enough space. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

6. Keep a Laundry Basket Inside of the Closet

If you live in a small apartment, you might not have enough space to keep a lot of decorations in the first place. I have personally been to apartments where the only closet in the entire place was so small, you didn’t even have enough space for one plastic tote. That’s why it might be a good idea for you to take a small laundry basket from somewhere like Walmart. Use the large plastic storage bags that I mentioned in an earlier bullet point, and use those two separate the different products in your decoration basket. Since this laundry basket is so much smaller than a tote, it should be possible for you to keep it in your closet, ideally on a shelf so that it’s kept off the floor.

These laundry baskets are $4 at Target. Credit: Target

Even if you do have the extra storage for holiday decor, you still might want to consider using them anyway. I use laundry baskets for every single organizational project I have ever done. They also come in handy when you’re trying to move. Every time I help someone move, I use laundry baskets, because they easily stack inside one another and are actually useful. Cardboard boxes need to be recycled, and totes take up a massive amount of space.

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Limit your number of Christmas totes. Credit: Do It On a Dime

5. Limit Your Number of Storage Totes

A great way to stop yourself from going overboard with Christmas decorations is to limit the number of totes you have in your storage area. For some people, this is non-negotiable. If you only have a closet or attic in your apartment or condo, you really can’t continue to buy more tote boxes year after year. However, for homeowners, limited space doesn’t stop some people from expanding their collection wherever they can. If you don’t limit yourself, those boxes end up in the garage, attic, basement, and the outdoor shed. It can be ridiculous. (Yes, I know several people like this.)

It’s good to give yourself a limit for the number of totes you keep. Credit: Lowes

Instead of giving yourself carte blanche to have as many Christmas items as your heart desires, give yourself a limit with the number of totes. It might also be easier to identify the obvious Christmas items if you buy red and green totes from Walmart or Target. Go through all of your holiday decoration boxes and throw away or donate anything that you no longer use. Is extra totes could either be used to store non-holiday items, or you could donate it to your local thrift store. Many thrift stores will appreciate having this free tote, since they need to move and store items on a regular basis.

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If you’re a parent, you’re already familiar with these cabinet locks. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

4. Drawer Safety Cabinet Lock to Hold Your Tape

If you’re a parent, you might already be familiar with those white plastic child-safe locks that help keep drawers and cabinets shut. While they are useful for their original purpose, you may have tossed them in the junk drawer once your kids were older. Or, you can easily buy them at your local dollar store. These cabinet locks can be reused as a tape holder. Since the lock is secure, it won’t be likely to pop out. Once the tape is all secure on the cabinet lock, you can place this in your junk drawer and never have to go searching for the tape again.

All of your tape and wire can be stored securely in one place. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

On the YouTube channel Gliue Guns and Roses, she shows us how she uses safety hooks from the Dollar Tree for all kinds of organization hacks. In her holiday closet, she installed a command hook on her wall and hung the cabinet lock on it with all of her tape. She also uses one in her bedroom closet for her scarf collection. The possibilities are endless. Try to think outside of the box on how you can use a cabinet hook to “hack” some of your other organizational projects.

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Wrap a piece of tape around the end of a dowel rod to keep ribbon secure. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

3. Store Rolls of Ribbon on a Dowel Rod

If you collect rolls of fabric holiday ribbon, you might already know how difficult it is to figure out where to put this. When you put them in a container, it’s hard to find them, because they get burried underneath everything else. Personally, I can relate to the issue of forgetting that I had beautiful fabric ribbon until it’s too late. The solution is to create a dowel rod for the ribbon. Every craft store sells wooden dowel rods. You can also find these at Walmart, and even Dollar Tree. Use some thick tape on one end of the rod, and slide the ribbons on.

This roll of ribbons can easily fit securely in the wrapping paper roll rack mentioned earlier. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses on YouTube

Alternately, you can use a broom handle from Dollar Tree if you have rolls of ribbon that are very wide. Some people choose to suspend the roll onto command hooks, which can be perfect if you are utilizing vertical closet space. This makes it possible for you to see all of your ribbon collection at once. You can roll the pieces and cut it with scissors without ever removing it from the rod. In the photo above, you can see that they kept their ribbon together with the wrapping paper.

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These clear plastic boxes are sold at Dollar Tree. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

2. Dollar Tree Storage Container Boxes

One of the most annoying things about finding your Christmas decorations is the fact that it’s so difficult to see things when they are stacked on top of one another. It’s also impossible to see all of your items when they’re inside of a colored tote. Sure, you might be smart enough to create a label on the outside of the box. However, most people will use tissue paper or old newspaper to wrap up their ornaments inside of the container. So it might be necessary for you to unwrap every single ornament before you find what you’re looking for.

These wooden ornaments are perfect to keep together in a plastic box. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

An alternate solution to this would be to purchase clear plastic storage container boxes. These are available in the craft section of Walmart, and they should also be available at Dollar Tree. If you use these, you can organize ornaments together by similarities. If they are non-breakable, you can get away with keeping them in the box without wrapping them at all. Or, if you do still need an extra bit of protection, at least you know that you can grab the box that has the label of the ornament you were looking for instead of digging through the entire tote.

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This one small shelf holds a lot of decorations. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses on Roses

1. Use a Dollar Tree Cabinet Shelf For Organization

At Dollar Tree, they sell white metal shelves that are used for creating a new shelf inside of your kitchen cabinets. Normally, this is great for anyone who is renting an apartment, and they can’t renovate the space. But this can easily be re-used for a holiday decor shelving unit.

The metal shelf at Dollar Tree. Credit: Glue Guns and Roses

All you need to do is buy the shelf, and bend the legs at an v-shaped angle. Make sure that the angle is facing towards the wall, because you don’t want anything to roll onto the floor. Use hooks to secure this on the wall. Now, it’s possible to use this for several rolls of wrapping paper, bags, shirt boxes, and so much more. If you want to see the full tutorial, click here.

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