How to deal with Holiday Clutter
Influx of holiday items
The holidays are often a time of new things. Items you’ve received as gifts (wanted or unwanted) and also items you may have gifted to yourself! I always find a few new things when shopping for others. This rapid influx of new items can overwhelm even the tidiest of homes.
Schedule time to reset
This is a big one. When you are constantly on the go, piles and messes tend to get worse and worse! A difference between homes that are tidy and homes that are messy are that tidy homes have less items and regular times to reset. If you have too many items, even if you take the time to reset, it will just feel like you are spinning your wheels. If you have an amount of items that fits your home well, then you should be able to reset relatively easily. When it is easy to put things away, other people, including small children, can all help! Look at your calendar, can you schedule a day to reset your home after the chaos?
Finding homes for new items
It is important to find or create a ‘home’ for every item that we own. This allows us to actually put items away. When you have a big influx of items, they may not have clear homes or you may now own too many of an item to fit where it was stored previously.
If an item is an upgrade or replacement for an old or broken item, clear the old item out immediately. If you need to wait a couple of weeks or months to make sure the new item works, at a minimum move it to a ‘drop zone’ of items that are leaving your house soon (library items, store returns, items borrowed from friends).
If you have too many of something, get rid of “least favorites” until the amount fits into your space. This is your home (bookshelf, drawer, cupboard) telling you how much of an item fits into your space. Every year, our grandmother gifts us dish towels and I get rid of the oldest ones to make room for the new.
Be generous with what you have, don’t save ‘just in case’ items. If your child hasn’t touched the craft kits they got last year and you just received three more, generously gift or pass on the old ones. Storing items away in a closet doesn’t make it more likely that you will use them, it makes it less likely. Let those items go and bring some joy to someone else who needs them right now. Too often I have seen items grow too old, gross, or get damaged in storage - truly a waste.
Decluttering old decorations
A super easy time to clear out old decorations is when you are putting your decor away. It is obvious which items you actually used and which ones you no longer need. Clear out most or all of what you did not use and store only what you used this year. In June, it will be difficult to make decisions about holiday decor, but right now - it’s a no brainer. Why not make it easy for yourself?
Storing holiday decorations
This is also a great time to consider how you are storing your holiday decorations. Is what you have working for you? There are many options on storage solutions and something different is going to work for everyone. One idea would be putting everything in matching red and green bins, or clear bins with red or green lids. Make sure you put all of your decorations for a holiday in one spot so you can find them next year. Some folks want to spend money on specific storage solutions such as a Christmas ornament storage box with dividers or Christmas light storage reels so that the lights don’t tangle. No matter what items you are trying to declutter or store, as always, the team at Declutter with Devon would be happy to help!