26 Nov Storing Christmas Decorations in Our Kamloops Storage Facility
Each holiday season, our Kamloops storage facility sees a boost to customer traffic as people get ready to decorate for Christmas. Many customers choose to store Christmas decorations in their storage unit, rather than at home, because 1) decorations take up a lot of space in home or apartment storage, and 2) many decorations are delicate and are better stored in a storage locker than in closets, garages, basements, etc.
If you’re like most people, storing Christmas decorations each year is not your favourite thing about the holiday!
Tips for Organizing Decorations in Your Storage Unit
Before you start organizing decorations, you’ll need a few storage basics:
- Bubble wrap
- Packing paper
- Packing tape
- Boxes in a variety of sizes
Visit Valleyview Mini Storage in Kamloops for these and other packing supplies.
The following are some tips that will make storing seasonal decorations easier, while keeping them safe and making it easier to find them in your storage unit each year.
Divide and Conquer Ornaments
Ornaments are fragile and need particular care and attention. You might be tempted to wrap ornaments in paper and store them in a box, but there is a safer and more organized way to store them.
Cardboard storage dividers are an easy DIY project. All you need to do is cut slots in scrap cardboard. The slots are fitted into one other to build a grid.
You can create 1-tier in a shallow box or create multiple tiers by taping a cardboard bottom to each grid and stacking them to the height of the box. You can also search Google for “cardboard box dividers” for sale.
Cardboard coffee cups with plastic lids are another way to safely store ornaments. You can even use different size cups for different size ornaments. Wrap an ornament in paper, pop it in the cup, place the lid, and put the cup in the storage box.
Keep Christmas Lights Untangled
Wrap lights around a homemade spool. You could use the cardboard with slots pictured above as a spool for fairy lights or small LED lights. Wrap the cord and fit it in a slot every now then so it doesn’t unwind and tangle. For strands of larger lights, you could use a cardboard poster tube as a spool or wrap your lights as you would a length of rope and place the spooled lights in a plastic wastepaper basket. For long strands of house lights, you could buy a cheap garden hose reel.
Organize Wrapping Paper and Gift Bags
Small, hanging, cloth or plastic garment bags work well for wrapping paper rolls and gift bags. For gift bags, flat wrapping paper, or other decorations, you can also find many sizes of plastic or cloth door organizers that you could hang up in your storage unit.
Make a Garland Spool
Tinsel and bead garlands or artificial tree bough garlands can easily become a tangled mess if not properly stored. Use rigid cardboard with slots as a spool. Again, you could use the cardboard storage dividers or cardboard tubes mentioned above as a spool.
Plastic Wrap an Artificial Christmas Tree with Ornaments, Garlands and All!
We all know that once your artificial tree is set up, breaking it down and putting back in its flimsy box can be an exercise in frustration. We recently saw a Pinterest hack that is simple and ingenious! Unplug the lights (but keep the lights on the tree), remove the star from the top of the tree, keep ornaments, garlands and tinsel in place, and snugly wrap from top to bottom with ordinary cling wrap. It would be relatively easy to figure out a method of hanging the tree in your storage unit. Next year, put the tree in its stand, slowly and carefully unwrap it, straighten the boughs if needed, and voila! According to many people who have tried this, it really works! Check out this YouTube video to see how it’s done.
Merry Christmas from the Valleyview Mini Storage Team!
Whether you celebrate Christmas, Kwanza, or Festivus, the Valleyview Mini Storage family hopes all of your holiday wishes come true and that the New Year brings you prosperity, health and happiness. Merry Christmas and thank you to our Kamloops storage facility customers!