Planning, packing, and tracking are the keys to making sense of your seasonal decorations. Here are tips for making sure each year feels easier than the last.

Undecking the Halls

Problem: You’ve finally perfected your decorating scheme, and you don’t want to forget it.
Solution: Label each string of lights, segment of garland, or ball of mistletoe with a marker and masking tape as you take it down so you’ll always know which item to hang in the entryway and which is just the right size for the mantel.

Problem: Every year, you’re left with piles of discarded paper and packaging.
Solution: Instead of throwing away used gift wrapping and tissue paper, run it through a paper shredder and use the fluffy strips as packing filler when you’re putting away your decorations, suggests Sandy Stuckey, a former director of special events and entertainment at Gaylord Opryland, in Nashville.

Problem: From year to year, you lose track of what you’ve got on hand.
Solution: Start a decorating notebook with an inventory sheet for each holiday so you can keep track of how many strands of lights and how many feet of garland you have, says Kelley Taylor, author of Holiday Decorating for Dummies (For Dummies, $20, www.dummies.com). “Consult it to make sure you don’t overbuy when it comes time to decorate again,” she adds. Remember: Any surplus items will just complicate your storage woes.

Problem: You don’t have the space to store all your trimmings.
Solution: “Evaluate your decorations annually, and keep only what you are really going to use,” says Valerie Parr Hill, author of Decorating for the Holidays (QVC Publishing, $27.50, www.amazon.com). If an item is damaged or has lost its color, get rid of it. “Give yourself permission to let some of that stuff go,” Hill says. And consider using natural accents — nuts, pinecones, and fresh greenery or flowers — that you can toss after the New Year.