Organizing after Christmas is not my strong suite. Each year when we pull out our Christmas decor I frustratedly swear to myself that I’m going to invest some time and money into putting away our decor in a more organized manor that year. They girls are typically so excited to get decorating the tree, but they fight over who gets to put on the “good” ornaments. If it’s just a colored bulb that is much too boring. But they can’t seem to wait for me to dig down to the bottom of the tote that was haphazardly put away the year before to find the ornament they are looking for.
So this year I finally did it. I really took the time to think through what would be the most helpful and what system I thought we would stick with. I gave myself a budget of about $100 and I think what I purchased will help a lot with controlling the clutter of our Christmas decor… and more!
First off I bought upright Christmas tree bag. I purchased a 5ft flocked Christmas tree this year and was concerned how much of the flocking I would loose over time if I kept packing and unpacking it. I knew I had space to store it if I left it assembled so I decided to buy a storage bag for it. I haven’t taken it down quite yet, but I’m thinking I might leave the lights on it also. So all I’ll have to do is remove the ornaments, place the bag over it and that’s done! Sounds like a win to me.
I snagged some Christmas light storage because obviously storing Christmas lights is annoying. This year I put three strands of lights on the tree that didn’t fully work because I couldn’t find my working lights. What was I thinking last year!? I’m still not sure why I decided to keep lights that weren’t properly working. 24 hours later I found 5 strands of lights that all worked. Again, what the world!?
Ok the next few items are the ones I’m most excited about!! I’ll start by saying that I really wanted to find some storage containers that weren’t green and red. This was surpisingly hard to find! I knew there would be plenty of red and green totes but I expected to find some clear ones as well and I really didn’t find a lot of options.
I really love these clear totes with gold trim that I found. The plastic seems durable and I like that I can see through them enough to get an idea for what’s in them but they aren’t fully transparent. I bought two different sets, I bought 2 large totes with 8 trays that hold 128 bulbs each and 2 small totes that have 4 trays each and hold 64 bulbs each. I like that I can use the large totes for my solid bulbs and the small ones for our special ornaments. I think this will be really helpful for next year when the girls are chomping at the bit to find the ornaments that they are the most excited to put on the tree.
I plan to use one of the small totes for my vintage and glass ornaments also. Which is great because I think I may have misplaced some of my vintage ornaments because I didn’t want to store them with my other ornaments.
The last item I purchased was a set of QR code stickers. I definitely got hit with a add for these and I fell for it. I did a bit of research and these stickers look so helpful and I could using them for so many things around our house. The way these work is you place the QR sticker on a tote or storage tub, you download the free app, then you add photos and list the contents of the tote. (Note, there are other brands for stickers like these. But after doing some research these had some of the largest sales, best ratings, and the app is always free.)
Now when I’m pulling out our Christmas decor if I’m looking for specific items I can go into the app and type the name of that items in the search. You give the sticker a name, note where you are storing it, then list all the contents and include pictures of all the items. So I’m able to note that I have green bulb ornaments in a particular tote. Then when I’m looking for those specific ornaments I can type in the app search “green bulbs” and it will tell me what tote number and where it’s located. I can also go right to the tote, scan the QR code and see all the contents of the tote.
I’m so excited to be able to use these stickers for other things like our camping and hunting supplies. Things we don’t use often but when we need a particular things it can be challenging to figure out what storage tote it’s in.type the name of that items in the search.
