Holiday Decorations 

The holidays are always a joyful time of year and once the holidays are over it is time to clean up and take down all those decorations.  You may have extra boxes and tissue paper from unwrapped presents, consider recycling these items.  Here are some ideas for storing holiday decorations, and self storage is a convenient place to store holiday items when the season is over.

Ornaments

• Used gift wrap and tissue paper can be a good way to protect your ornaments.  If you put it through a paper shredder it will make fluffy strips as filler.
• Fragile ornaments should be kept at the top of a box.
• Tiny ornaments can be stored in egg cartons.
• Partitioned wine of liquor boxes can be used as a cell pack to house individually wrapped ornaments in the cells.
• What to do with all the ornament hooks, rolls of small ribbon, cording, scissors, twist ties and craft wire?  We have an idea, a used shirt box or shoe box are ideal for that application.
• Craft ornaments that are typically made at school and brought home often are food based ornaments these can be stored in plastic bags that will keep smell down and prevent pests from exploring the items.

Garland

• Plastic totes work great for storing garland since there is nothing to break you can stuff them in the container.
• You can avoid measuring the swag next year by using a colored twist tie on the center of the swag.
• For varying lengths of garland you can use a piece of masking tape on the ends and label the one for the entryway, mantle, etc..

Lights

• To avoid a tangled mess you can use an old wrapping paper tube to wrap the lights around and tape the ends to hold them in place.
• Use a sandwich bag to put extra and loose bulbs then store inside the tubes.