Organizing Christmas Decorating

When the Christmas season arrives and it is time to decorate the inside of my house, on goes the Christmas music. This helps me to get and stay in the Christmas spirit as I begin to methodically transform my house into a place of Christmas magic.

I like to take time to make sure that the house is clean. This keeps me from making an even bigger mess. I want to make sure that all the furniture is dusted and everything is picked up and put in its place. After cleaning the house I then begin to de-clutter. To do this I get a big plastic bin and carefully place into it all the knick knacks that usually decorate my house. If they need to be wrapped in packing material so they won't get scratched, dented or broke then I take the time to do this now. I don't want them to get broke while they packed up for the Christmas season. Going through each room, one at a time, makes it so much easier when it is time to place them back into their proper place. I then label each bin as to what room it belongs to.

Now that all my knick knacks have been removed I get all my Christmas decorations out of storage. Sometimes an item may have shifted just a bit from moving the decorations into the house. Carefully, I open the first Christmas box and begin unpacking.

This is the time that I start doing an inventory, as I remove everything from the Christmas boxes. I check to make sure that the item isn't broken. If it something that is broken I need to decide if it is something that I feel is worth fixing. If it isn't something that is worth fixing, then now is the time to throw it away. While I am doing my inventory I take note if there are things that I want to add to my Christmas decoration. If there are unbroken items that I just don't want any more, I place them in their own box for give away.

I keep all of my packing material. I try to keep the original boxes, as this helps to protect the items when it is time to pack them away. I put down on my inventory list if more packing material will be needed when it is time to put all my holiday decorations away.

I then group the decorations for the individual rooms in the house. In my Christmas boxes I have placed past pictures of different rooms that were decorated for Christmas. Looking at the pictures helps refresh my memory as to what worked and what didn't work in previous years.

On paper I write down the rooms that I want to decorate, noting what theme I would like to use for that room. Usually I make the living room a formal theme, while the family room usually has a fun Santa or Christmas bear theme.

Now I take the items and place them into the rooms to decorate. I like starting with the room that has the least amount to do so that I feel the satisfaction of finishing one room at a time. If the Now the Christmas fun has begun; my house has magically transformed into a Christmas wonderland.