While the days after Christmas are usually when you can find the best deals on holiday items for next year, there are a number of stocking up notions to keep in mind in these days before Christmas–and now that we’re in the throes of Chanukah. These notions are frugal ways that you can clean up and put away your holiday decorations once all of your celebrating is over, and none requires any special equipment at all. Here are four ideas to consider.
1. Don’t toss paper towel and/or toilet paper rolls
I know that in the past I’ve shown you how you can use cardboard rolls as fire starters. Well, at this time of the year, hold on to those paper towel and toilet paper rolls, because they can help you big time when cleaning up after the holidays. You can use them to string lights around–because you know they always end up tangled by the next year when you just toss them in a box. Instead, this year, take a few minutes to neatly wind your lights around these rolls to make next year’s decorating that much easier. You can reuse the inside rolls from wrapping paper in a similar way. Do you have individual candles that you place in your windows to give your home a festive feel after dark? You can slip a candle each inside a paper towel roll to prevent it from breaking when you put it away.
2. Use shredded paper for storing delicate decorations
As I demonstrated in the green Christmas segment below, shredded paper does a fabulous job as a packing material for keeping decorations safe and sound for the next holiday season. Since our mailboxes tend to be overstuffed with paper this time of the year, shred the catalogs and the envelopes that held Christmas greetings, and use that shredded paper when putting away your decorations at the end of the year. Need to ship some gifts that you didn’t get around to purchasing in time for the holidays? You can use shredded paper to pack the box, too.
3. Find ways to reuse old boxes
When you think about it, just about any box in your home can do double duty for storing wrapping materials or decorations. You can fill shoeboxes with the aforementioned shredded paper when putting away your ornaments or menorah candles. You can take empty cereal boxes (without the liners) or facial tissue boxes, and use them to store ribbon, tissue paper, smaller gift bags or the holiday cards that you plan to trim down and reuse next year as gift tags. Ordered gifts online? You’ve probably got plenty of shipping boxes around that can become your de facto holiday stash storage devices.
4. Reuse egg cartons for storing “round” decorations
If you have a lot of smaller, round decorations that might get lost in a box of shredded paper, you can store them instead inside an empty egg carton. The compartments that were meant to hold eggs do a fabulous job of keeping other delicate items safe, too, like small, glass ornaments. Here are some additional ways to reuse egg cartons during the rest of the year.
What are some ways that you can reuse items for post-holiday storage? I’d love to hear some of your ideas.
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These are good ideas to utilize. I incorporate a variety of things to save space given the small apartment I live in. I can’t wait to have a house with walk-in closets, a basement and a garage one day.
Menorah candles are not reused, they burn till they burn out. However it is possible to have all kinds of odds and ends of decorations and other items that should be stored together. Chanukah dish towels, pot holders, dreidels, decorative plates and mugs are a few of the things that come to mind. So if you can group them in a storage container they’ll be easier to find and use the next year.
[...] I wrote in an earlier this post this week about frugal storage ideas, you can always use the boxes that this year’s gifts came in to store for next [...]