As we approach the holiday season, many of you will be decorating your homes for the holidays. Over the years, I have learned a thing or two about getting organized for the holidays.

Years ago, I got some green and red tubs to put away the decorations after the holidays were over so they would be easy to locate in the attic or basement. Before then, we used an assortment of cardboard boxes to store our decorations. The tubs were larger and had nice handles which made fewer trips up and down the attic or basement steps and the handles made them easier and safer to carry.

Believe it or not, we have a black and orange tub to store the fall and Halloween decorations and a pastel yellow tub to store spring and Easter decorations. Yep, these are obvious when stacked among other tubs and easy to find or send someone else to get.

This year as you get out your decorations think about those that you choose not to put out and consider WHY you aren’t using them this year. Maybe they just don’t suit your tastes or style of decorating anymore. Maybe they belong to your kids and you need to sort those into a tub for each of your children so they will have a tub of their own to start their decoration collection with when they move into a home of their own. We have a few ornaments that are very breakable family treasures that we rarely put on our tree because we don’t want to take a chance on breaking them. As I am writing this and thinking of those ornaments, it occurs to me that these will have no meaning to our kids because they were never a part of our holiday decorating. I am now asking myself what I am saving them for. This is the year we either use it or lose it. If it doesn’t fit neatly into the tubs we already have to store our decorations in, then we will need to declutter some things so we can keep others.

Another quick tip is to attach a list of what is in each box or at least label them (ornaments, garland, lights, nativity, etc.). You could use double-sided tape to attach a sheet protector and then slide the lists in and out as needed while keeping it clean, dry and protected.

We have done this every few years and we got to the point where we realized the ornaments our kids were getting each year were over-crowding our tubs and the kids needed their own, so I waited for the lovely red and green tubs to go on deeply discounted sale and bout one for each of them. Then we took a huge black permanent marker and wrote each kid’s name on the lid and tub their ornaments would now be stored in.

If that kid didn’t take the time to put their decorations on the tree then they didn’t get used. The kids were also in charge of taking their ornaments off the tree each year and putting them away in the boxes they came in to keep them nice. This is always something of a trip down memory lane as they remember the things that were going on in their lives during those years. Their great-grandmother and grandma each chose ornaments for each of them every year. The ornaments were usually Hallmark ornaments. Occasionally if we found an ornament that had particular meaning for one of them we would also get them an ornament. Because the kids were in charge of hanging their own ornaments each year, they remember them and will have those memories for the rest of their lives. I would tell the kids as they packed their ornaments away that first year that they should also put any ornament they personally made in their tubs and let me know if there was anything, in particular, they wanted to keep that had special meaning to them but didn’t specifically belong to them.

Last year, we never got around to putting the tree up and it was oddly sad not seeing it, but very nice not having to put it away either. It was the only year I can ever remember not having decorated the house for the holiday season.

Now we don’t get carried away, we usually just set up the artificial tree and decorate it, hang the stockings and set out some decorations on the mantel and tabletops in the living room. We don’t have tons of stuff and it can usually be put up or taken down in an afternoon or evening. I like the get it set up over Thanksgiving weekend and Hubby doesn’t like to have it taken down before the twelfth day of Christmas for some reason. I usually like it down sometime around new years, but I usually let him keep it up longer.

So when it comes to organizing your holiday decorations you need to set aside a time and add it to your calendar to do the decorating and un-decorating. You also need to make a list of things you will need like wrapping paper, tape, bows, gift boxes or whatever you use. Do you need to buy stamps to mail letters or cards? Is your address list current? Do you need to get updated addresses for that cousin that bought a house this year? Schedule in ten or fifteen minutes a day to do something to make this year’s holiday season go smoother. Do you have the recipes you will make gathered up? Have you been adding the non-perishable items to your shopping list each week so the grocery budget doesn’t explode the end of December? What are the things you can do ahead of time to save yourself the added stress later?

Do you know where you are going on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day? What days do you and your family members have off work? Are there programs you need to attend? Add them all to your calendar. Do you need to make reservations for dinner somewhere? How about tickets to the show or event you want to attend? Do you plan to donate your time ringing a bell, wrapping gifts, shopping for those less fortunate, serving meals at a soup kitchen? Add it all to your calendar. It would be a shame to miss something you want to do because it wasn’t on your calendar and in the business of the season it slipped your mind.

If you take the time to make your lists and check them twice over the next week or two, you will be amazed at how much smoother everything goes and how much less stressed you feel and how much more enjoyable the season can be. You owe it to yourself to get organized for the holidays. Yes, YOU are worth it!

In case you missed these recent holiday related posts, be sure to take a minute to read them by clicking the links below.

Are the Holidays a Burden?
Saving for the Holidays

If you have been reading this blog very long it probably isn’t a surprise that I am pre-writing some of the November Thursday posts so I can focus on writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days (NaNoWriMo). Stay tuned and add yourself to the email list in the near the upper right of this page so you can be notified by email when I post something new and can read it right in your email if you choose.