How To: Store Christmas Decorations and Lights
What You Need
Follow These Three Easy Steps
Evaluate your decorations annually, and keep only what you are really going to use. Then wrap snugly with tissue paper to
protect against breakage.
Aha! Recycle discarded tissue paper from opened gifts to wrap the ornaments.
Place ornaments in an ornament box or a sturdy, well-padded partitioned wine box. Egg cartons also make excellent packaging for tiny decorations. Fragile items should go at the top of a box. The more you have to dig for an ornament, the greater your chances of damaging it.
Coil lights around a holiday light reel, available at home supply and hardware stores.
Aha! You can also wrap lights around empty coffee cans. Cut a slit in the plastic lid and put the receptacle end of the light
cord through it. Wrap the string around the can, store extra bulbs and extension cords inside, then replace the lid. (When
it's time to unpack the lights, plug each strand into an electrical outlet to make sure it works before you unroll it.)
Tip: Always store colored lights in a dark place to keep the bulbs from fading (blues, greens, and purples fade faster than reds
and yellows do).
