Tag: holiday decorations

Controlling Santa’s Christmas Clutter

Posted on by Jordank

After all of the shopping, cooking and party planning, Christmas is finally here. It’s time to tear into those gifts and feast on your favorite foods. But along with all of this bounty, Santa (and probably Amazon, too) has delivered a lot of packaging, wrap and other detritus that you’ll want to keep in check as you celebrate the season.

First, you’ll want to have a garbage bag or bin near the tree to collect all of the gift wrap that’s torn-into at this year’s gift unveiling. Americans consume about 4 million pounds of gift wrap every year, or about 333 million square feet — enough to cover more than 5,000 football fields! Collect and recycle it quickly as it gets shred and tossed aside to keep your home clean.

Shopping for all of those gifts undoubtedly produced a lot of empty, utilitarian boxes and bags. If you’re hosting, keep a few of these handy for people to put their new things in to take home after the Christmas party, and recycle the rest. Integrating new stuff is difficult enough; getting it to where it ultimately needs to go shouldn’t be a hassle, too.

The larger the group, the more work prepping and cleaning up from a meal will be. Don’t be shy about assigning tasks before you serve the big feast so that it’s clear who will be setting the table, wrangling the kids, clearing the table, and washing and drying the dishes, flatware and pots and pans. Cut the chaos before it starts!

When you’re done with the holiday, be sure to pack anything you want to keep for next year sensibly, I Love My Disorganized Life says. Purge ornaments you don’t like as you pack them, box your artificial tree with all of its accessories, and — if you’re feeling really ambitious — post printed packing lists on the exterior of all storage boxes.

“When you head into the post-Christmas cleanup with a plan, it is much easier to tackle the mess head-on,” the blog says. “Making sure you are systematic and organized doesn’t have to take a lot of extra time now, and the payoff when you can easily find everything next year is worth it!”

If you find lightly-used holiday decorations that you don’t use or want as you purge, set them aside in a separate donation box and contact ClothingDonations.org for a pickup so that they might bring others joy in the years to come. Your donation will also bring innumerable gifts to the nation’s veterans all year long. Happy Holidays from The Organizing Blog and ClothingDonations.org!

Decorate on the Cheap With Homemade Ornaments

Posted on by Jordank

Decorating a large tree for the first time? You may not have enough ornaments to really fill it out. To bring it a distinctive, homey look without spending a lot of money, make your own ornaments. Try making some of the creative ornament suggestions from Woman’s Day such as mini snowglobes, glittery jingle bells or yarn-covered Christmas stars. You can also use “found” twigs to form ornaments or print whimsical family photos to hang on the tree. And you live near the ocean, all you need is a drill and some string to hang oyster or beachcombed shells on your tree.

Declutter and Donate Ahead of the Holidays

Posted on by Jordank

The holiday season is upon us, and every day, retailers provide us with new incentives to spend: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday. But those thoughtful gifts and doorbuster deals can take up lots of space in an already-cluttered home. That’s why you should do a pre-Christmas decluttering, knowing that new stuff is on the way.

If you have children, there will definitely be new toys coming into the home, and you probably have huge bins of old toys that have fallen out of favor or are no longer age-appropriate. Sort through them and get rid of anything broken or incomplete, The (Mostly) Simple Life suggests, and involve kids in the process. Set aside anything that’s useful, but unused.

As you decorate the home, edit out any decorations that no longer make the cut. Whether it’s burned-out string lights, cracked tree ornaments or dog-eared accents, trash anything that’s too worn to fulfill its function. If something is still functional, but you don’t like it or want to display it, set it aside in a “donate” pile.

This is also an excellent time to take stock of cold-weather clothing. If there are items you won’t be wearing due to changes in sizes or styles, set them aside. At the same time, you can sort, streamline and store your summer wardrobe. Was there anything that spent the entire summer in your drawers and closets? Get rid of it!

Put all of the still-usable castoff decorations, games, toys, sweaters, swimwear and other goods into boxes and bags, and visit ClothingDonations.org to schedule a pickup. If you do so quickly, many of your unique but unwanted items will be available to other shoppers for purchase ahead of Christmas — making their holidays happier.

When you give away the stuff you’re not using, it can find a new purpose with someone else who can really use it. They might actually want and enjoy that stuffed Santa or those old baby clothes. And when they purchase those disused items through a thrift store supplied by ClothingDonations.org, they will help fund veterans’ programs throughout the year.

An added bonus? After you’ve done a thorough, pre-holiday decluttering, you’ll know better what you and your family need to buy new — making holiday shopping and gifting easier. Better still, you’ll have reclaimed the space in your home you need to store it. Start decluttering today — Giving Tuesday — for a happy holiday season!

Shop the Thrift for Super Bowl Party Decorations

Posted on by Jordank

Dollar and thrift stores can be great sources for Super Bowl party supplies such as felt, pennants, gently used serving dishes and more; you might even find a lightly used NFL jersey at the thrift that was donated to ClothingDonations.org. At the very least, you can pick up paper plates, napkins and plastic flatware in the team colors — red and blue for the New England Patriots and green and black for the Philadephia Eagles — for your guests to use as they gorge themselves on chips, dips, nachos and wings from a thriftily-crafted buffet of favorites.

The Declutterer’s Favorite Day

Posted on by Jordank

For those engaged in the war on clutter, today is the biggest holiday of the year. True, it may be better recognized across the pond, and there’s a good chance you won’t have the day off to celebrate. What’s more, the occasion’s original purpose isn’t even what many Americans think it is.

But the day after Christmas — Boxing Day — is truly a fantastic time to take inventory of all of the new stuff that came into your home during the holidays, begin taking down those festive decorations, and decide what you want to keep and store.

The likeliest explanation behind Boxing Day’s beginnings says that British nobles and merchants would reward workers for their year of service with boxes of food on the day after Christmas.

Today, however, the event is commonly assumed to be the day people should box up the special-occasion china, Christmas ornaments and gifts that accumulated under the tree, and clean the house for everyday use. And why not? Entertaining guests and exchanging gifts produces both trash and treasure.

Whether you can start your Boxing Day decluttering on Dec. 26 or not, start with the trash. Gather up the shredded wrapping paper, kinked ribbons, dog-eared greeting cards, cracked ornaments, chipped glassware and burned-out lights … and chuck ’em. You don’t want to be unpacking anything less-than-perfect 11 months from now.

Next, there are going to be things you got (or got out) for the holidays that you just don’t like enough to pack away for next year: holiday supplies, mismatched decorations, tired tchotchkes and other odds-and-ends. If they no longer fit your holiday scheme and are in decent shape, don’t hide them in a closet! Bag them up and set them aside.

Now, find a place for the new stuff you and your family received as gifts. Is any of it an upgraded version of something you already have? You really don’t need that old sweater, extra gadget or whatever it is — you have a brand-new one! Bag or box those duplicates.

Note: If you really want to do a complete post-Christmas cleanup, get rid of two things for every new thing you try to integrate into your home and life, says Zen Habits. That way, you’ll get to enjoy your new gifts in a more clutter-free environment.

Finally, take all of those bagged and boxed castoffs and contact ClothingDonations.org to schedule a pickup. Within weeks, a truck will take those unwanted items off your hands, and they will be resold to support programs benefitting veterans.

And that will help make the New Year happier for you, your family and those who served. Here’s to a clutter-free 2018!