How to Deal with Post-Holiday Clutter

I don’t know about you, but I spent the weekend taking down my Christmas tree and packing up the decorations. This year I actually went through everything and got rid of a ton of old decorations, gift bags I had hoped to reuse and broken ornaments that I had been meaning to fix but just never got around to it. It felt really good cutting down on our collection of festive flair. And though it was a ton of work, getting everything in line is going to make it so much easier for next Christmas. Here are some tips for getting organized and dealing with the post-holiday clutter.

Piles are Your Friend

With my ADHD, cleaning can be overwhleming, especially when you add extra stuff on top of it. Often times if I bring something to another room I’ll find something there that I need to do and I’ll abandon my first task. So I’ve come to rely on creating piles. I’ll organize everything in a central place and then once I have it all together I’ll box things up and put them away.

Get Smart about Storage

And speaking of boxes, you need to be smart about your storage. If you have the time, I’d suggest you do what I did this year and take everything apart, make piles, and pick totes that will fit what you have. Before I was just stuffing things into boxes and I had no idea of how poorly I was using space. Be intentional with your packing and don’t forget to wrap your delicate items in newspaper.

Ask Yourself if this is Something You’ll Ever Use Again

I have some beautiful Christmas decorations from all over the world, many of them extremely delicate. So while I love them, I have to protect them from my rather curious 2 and a half year old. Even though I won’t be displaying these items any time soon, I know someday I’ll pull them back out. But this year I said goodbye to quite a few decorations because I knew they just wouldn’t make the cut. 

That’s a wrap on Christmas! Now that you have some ideas of how to cut black on the clutter after a fun season, check out my post on how to survive the post-holiday blues.