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Organizing Your Home for the Christmas Season

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:04:04 +0000

The holiday season is swiftly approaching, bringing with it great fun and family events. As you are preparing for this great season, it is important to plan accordingly. The friends and family you invite into your home bring plenty of warmth and cheer, but can also create quite a mess. For this reason, organizing your home for the Christmas season is very important, to anyone who wishes their home to stay as clean as the freshly fallen snow outside.

Organizing your home entails assembling a good number of storage containers for everything from sugar cookies to Christmas lights and ornaments. The tree can create a mess as well, and if you choose an artificial tree, it will also need to be stored. When it comes to getting yourself and your home ready for this Christmas season, challenges abound. Getting started early, even before Thanksgiving, is a good way to thwart the coming stress of December.

While one may not want to start decorating until after Thanksgiving, there is no real reason to not prepare for decoration. This is where organization can become an issue. The first thing you need to do is to begin cleaning your entire house. All of your non-seasonal knick-knacks need to go. Throw rugs and blankets may need to be replaced as well.

Boxes of all sizes are invaluable for holiday storage and organization. This starts with storing your non-holiday items in order to make room for the Christmas tree and more. Label the boxes by room, and begin filling them up with the items that you are getting replacing. When a box is full move it into storage. Once your home is thoroughly desolate and devoid of decorative flair you can begin to think of your Christmas decorations.

Getting your actual decorations out can be a major hassle. This is the year to overhaul your storage system. Get rid of those cardboard boxes and replace them with plastic containers. Plastic is sturdier, stacks more easily, protects your items better and can simplify your storage process. Furthermore, plastic containers have been tweaked to fit any purpose. Many boxes can easily fit up to sixteen ornaments in safe individual compartments. The boxes come in three snap together trays that can, when put together, can safely store twenty-seven or twenty-eight ornaments. You no longer have to worry about losing precious keepsakes when you store your ornaments. Furthermore, you can avoid the waste of time that comes with wrapping ornaments in layer after layer of newspaper. These simple boxes provide perfect protection for all of your tree trimmings. They also can work wonderfully to stow bows, ribbons and other wrapping accessories.

Another frequent organizational nightmare associated with preparing for the Christmas season is dealing with all of the wrapping paper and ribbon. Keeping these items stored without damage can be a significant challenge. It’s a good idea to store all your gift-wrapping supplies in one location. Hang them on a door for storage, so they don’t get crushed. This can help you keep the rest of your house organized for Christmas.

A final crucial step for getting your house organized for Christmas is to prepare your kitchen. The Christmas holiday season can easily be referred to as baking season, and if you plan on doing a lot of work in your kitchen, then you better be ready. Forget your spring cleaning routine, now is the time to get that kitchen cleaned out. Get your spice rack organized, move those pots to the most accessible location, and get your appliances reorganized to fit your baking needs. For most of the year your kitchen should be organized to meet your day to day needs. But during the holidays, your day to day necessities are thrown aside. Rather then focusing on the meat and potatoes of mealtime you may find yourself emphasizing the cookies and cakes during this time of year. One of the largest organizational disasters that come along with Christmas is trying to work around a kitchen that is not built for baking. You need to rework this room, or your sanity is going to be tested throughout the entire season.

Getting ready for the Christmas holiday season should start just before Thanksgiving. Even if you are one who refuses to decorate until after Thanksgiving, there is work to be done and the benefits can be very rewarding. Begin your organizational work now, and you can be well on your way to a more relaxed holiday season around the house or apartment. However, if you procrastinate, things can quickly become quite hectic and stressful. Invest in the proper storage materials, deal with the problem of wrapping paper and overhaul your kitchen. These steps should set you well on your way to a happy and peaceful Christmas holiday season.

About the Author:

Nick Kakolowski is a freelance writer who writes about home organization, offering seasonal tips and discussing specific items such as Christmas ornament storage.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Organizing Your Home for the Christmas Season

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Organize Christmas Items to Preserve Them For Years to Come

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:02:18 +0000

Organizing your Christmas items is the most effective way to preserve them for the years to come. While some of your Christmas decorations may simply be items used to fill an empty spot, for many of us, each item carries special memories. Whether it is a paper wreath made by a child, or an ornament purchased on your honeymoon, these items deserve special treatment. While any item can be broken or damaged while on display, items that are damaged while in storage are heartbreaking. To prevent this from happening, it is important to carefully plan how you are going to store your holiday treasures and take the time to store them properly.

So what is the best way to protect your precious memories? The first step is to know which dangers are present that can damage your decorations. While you know that the main concern for your Christmas decorations is breakage, but it is not the only threat present that can damage your ornaments. Others important dangers to your decorations are moisture and sunlight. Understanding each of these dangers can help you store your decorations properly to prevent any serious damage.

Protect From Breakage

Protecting your Christmas ornaments from breakage is the main concern of many. There are several ways to do this. The first is to invest in storage containers that are specifically made for Christmas storage. Ornament boxes are made of a sturdy plastic and have spaces for each ornament individually. This prevents the ornaments from hitting against each other and prevents the box from being smashed if it is stacked in the garage or basement. If your storage containers have empty room in them after careful packing, fill the space with crumpled newspaper or tissue paper. This prevents the items from banging against each other, which can lead to breakage.

Protect From Moisture

While breakage is an obvious problem, moisture is a more insidious one. You may not realize that moisture is damaging your ornaments until it is too late. Moisture is particularly damaging to soft items but can damage anything. If you must store your Christmas items in a damp area, there are several things that you can do to minimize the damage. Store your decorations in plastic containers; raise them a few inches off the ground and add silica gel to packing containers that contain wreathes and soft decorations. This can help prevent moisture from damaging your decorations. .

Protect From UV Damage

Prevent damage from ultraviolet rays by storing your decorations in colored, non-clear containers. UV rays not only bleach out fabric but can weaken it as well. Many plastic containers that are used for storage are clear or opaque. While these are acceptable for storage in a basement, if the storage area receives light through windows, you should invest in colored plastic containers.

Once you know what the threats are to your Christmas decorations, you can protect them much more effectively. Proper organization of your holiday items allows you to find them easily and know that they are protected. While the initial investment in specially designed storage containers may cost more than storing the items in cardboard boxes or trying to fit them back into their original containers it is in an investment that will pay off. You will increase the life of your holiday ornaments, and make the decorating process one you enjoy rather than dread each year. Purchasing the proper storage containers for items such as wrapping paper, ceramic collectibles and candles is a treat that you deserve. The person that does the majority of the decorating should have the option of choosing which storage solutions would work best for the family. They are familiar with not only the decorations, but also the areas where the decorations are stored. This provides them with the most insight into what problems the area of the house may have such as moisture, rodent problems, or intense sunlight.

Once you have invested in these storage containers, they should last as long as your keepsakes. Avoid over packing to prevent the boxes from stretching out. This can cause problems with the seals in your lids, and handle with common sense for the longest life. While there is no reason to be overly gently with these storage containers, do not stack heavy boxes more than three high, and do not throw them around. Just because your items are tucked securely into, their storage container does not mean you can throw the boxes around as if you would other, unbreakable, loads. Ornament storage is important because each decoration has many memories that go with it and learning the proper way to store these decorations can be very beneficial. Consider these tips during the next holiday season and you can safely store your decorations for many years to come.

Rachel Jackson is a freelance writer and blogger who writes about topics concerning home maintenance and organization. Rachel Jackson writes about seasonal organization issues, such as Christmas ornament storage.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rachel_Jack_Son
http://EzineArticles.com/?Organize-Christmas-Items-to-Preserve-Them-For-Years-to-Come&id=1783159