2 Tips For Preparing Holiday Decorations For Storage
If you love decorating for the holiday season, then your seasonal decoration stash may be outgrowing your storage room. If you love to purchase new decorations every year, but still like to keep the older ones around for sentimental reasons, then it is a good idea to move your decorations into a storage unit after the holiday season. That way, you can shop 'til you drop when purchasing new decorations this year without worrying about your decoration collection taking up your entire home!
However, you want to prepare your holiday decorations well for storage to keep them in good condition. Read on to learn how to prepare the most popular holiday decorations for storage and keep them in great shape while they are in storage.
1. Prepare Your Artificial Christmas Tree for Storage Properly: 2 Options
If you invested in a great artificial Christmas tree, then you may dislike having to break it down each year after displaying it and hoping that, when you unbox it next year, no branches are damaged or distorted. The good news is that, if you choose a storage unit that is large enough, you can simply place a Christmas tree storage bag over your artificial and store it upright in your storage unit. This bag will protect it against damage inflicted by humidity fluctuations and dust.
When storing a Christmas tree upright, it is a good idea to store it on a rolling tree stand instead of a traditional one to make it easier to move into and out of the storage unit when needed.
However, if you would like your tree to take up less space in storage, then you can still keep it in great shape when storing it in its original box if you take the right steps to prepare it properly.
To prepare your tree for storage it its original box, follow these instructions:
- Give the tree a good dusting. Use a feather duster to carefully dust the branches without damaging them.
- Compress the branches properly. Don't just start compressing the branches haphazardly. Starting at the top of the tree where the smallest branches lie, fold the branches in and up around the tree "trunk." Then, work your way down the tree, section by section, until all branches are compressed.
- Disassemble the tree and wrap each section in twine. Wrap the twine around the tree sections just tightly enough to keep branches compressed, yet not so tight that it creates indentations in the tree branches.
- Place all sections in a tree storage bag. Christmas tree storage bags are also useful for storing trees that are disassembled to provide protection from humidity fluctuations and dust that the box may not.
- Place the tree storage bag in your tree's original box. Your tree's original, sturdy box will add an additional layer of protection against potential damage.
While properly preparing your tree for storage is important, it is just as important to store it in the right type of storage unit. In general, traditional green artificial trees are less sensitive to fluctuations in temperature and can stay in great shape in temperatures that range from 40 to 90 degrees F. However, white and/or frosted Christmas trees are more temperature sensitive. Both types of artificial trees are sensitive to fluctuations in humidity, which your tree bag provides some protection against.
Both types of trees will stay in their best shape if stored in a climate-controlled storage unit. Even if you have a green Christmas tree and temperatures are relatively mild in your area of the country, climate-controlled units are not just kept at a relatively stable temperature range, but their humidity levels are also controlled to keep items in storage from suffering damage from humidity fluctuations.
2. Follow These Tips to Keep Holiday Lights Tangle-free until next Season
If you love to decorate, then you have probably accumulated many strings of holiday lights. Like many enthusiasts of holiday decorating, you may throw them all in a large bin at the end of the season and then untangle them when you open the bin the next year.
To prepare your lights for storage, so you can look forward to skipping the "untangling" process next holiday season, wrap your lights around few Christmas light spools or use Martha Stewart's more affordable suggestion of wrapping your lights around large pieces of cardboard with slits cut into the sides of them.
Once you have wound your lights around spools or cardboard, be sure to place them in plastic bins to further protect them from damage.
If you love decorating for the holidays, then your holiday decoration collection may be outgrowing your home storage room. Move your collection to a storage unit after this holiday season and follow these two tips to prepare your Christmas tree and holiday lights for storage and keep them in good condition while they are being stored.