Holiday Organizing Tips to Keep Your Home Tidy and Stress-Free
The holiday season is a time of joy, celebration—and a lot of clutter. Between decorations, seasonal clothing, gift wrap, and all the new things coming into your home it can quickly become overwhelming. With the right storage strategies, you can keep your home organized and stress-free throughout the holidays.
1. Declutter Before the Holidays Begin
One of the best ways to prepare for the holiday season is to start with a declutter session. Decluttering before the holidays not only frees up space but also reduces the amount of stuff you need to organize and store later.
Assess your holiday decorations: Go through your collection of holiday decorations and get rid of anything broken, outdated, or no longer meaningful. Donate items that are still in good condition but don’t fit your current style.
Purge seasonal items: Review your holiday wardrobe and accessories. If there are pieces you haven’t worn in years, consider donating them to free up closet space.
Clear kitchen clutter: Make room for holiday-specific items by clearing out gadgets and serving ware you rarely use.
Toys, books and clothes: Go through your kids spaces with them and get rid of the things that no longer fit or that they don’t use. Doing this ahead of the season gives time for it to be donated so it gets to the people who need it.
For more decluttering tips check out last years holiday blog
2. Holiday storage
You don’t need fancy ornament bins, or bins that are holiday specific at all. Any large tubs will do.
Categorize and label: Organize decorations by category—lights, ornaments, wreaths—and store them in separate bins. Clearly label each bin for easy identification.
Stackable bins: Choose stackable bins to maximize vertical storage space in your garage, attic, or closet.
Color-coded bins: Consider using color-coded bins for different holidays (e.g., red and green for Christmas, orange for Halloween) to make finding what you need even easier.
3. Set your kitchen up for success
Whether you host a big dinner, or bake leading up to the holidays, an organized kitchen makes life so much easier.
Have a baking zone: Keep your baking stuff in one place so you don’t buy extra ingredients. Use stackable bins for your cookie cutters.
Kitchen storage: Serving dishes should be stored out of the way since you don’t use them every day
Organize your pantry/ food cupboards: Keep your pantry organized so that you know exactly where everything is as you go to make dinner.
4. Create an Organized Gift Wrap Station
Gift wrapping can become a chaotic task during the holidays, but with an organized gift wrap station, you can streamline the process.
Hanging Storage: These gift wrap storage bags are my absolute favourite solution. They can go in a closet, on the back of a door or hang off a stud in a utility room like at my house. They have a lot of pockets so you can keep tape, ribbon, gift tags and cards as well as long pockets for gift wrap. The back side has space for gift bags and tissue paper. I use it for all holiday wrap and birthday wrap and decorations.
5. Have one spot to store gifts
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been working with a client and found Christmas gifts in July that were never given, I probably wouldn’t have to organize anymore.
Pick a place and stick with it: It can be hidden in plain sight. Somewhere that it won’t be found by someone it shouldn’t be. But that’s easy enough that you remember where it is. Having one place for all gifts if possible. Though we use a trunk in our hallway for kid things and my home office closet for things for my husband and the Santa gift wrap.
Have a spreadsheet: I use a notes app but have created spreadsheets for clients with multiple kids. That way they know exactly what they’ve purchased.
Staying organized during the holiday season doesn’t have to be stressful.
Happy Holidays!
-Jocelyn