225 | The Best Thing I Did to Minimize Holiday Decorations but Keep Our House Festive

[00:00:00] TIS the season of holiday decorations everywhere. Some love this, and some love to hate it. I like to keep the magic of the season going. But I also implement a zero clutter policy when it comes to holiday decorations. I’ve changed the decorations in my home over the past few years. And I am finally at a place where it less is truly more.

I’ve said that less is more in most situations when it comes to your home and removing clutter. But this is true with holiday decorations. True. I’m at this place less is truly more because we have less decorations out in my house right now for holidays, but it feels more festive than it has any year prior.

 enjoy driving around and looking at Christmas lights on the [00:02:00] house. I said all the holiday decorations. And I love themes for parties and events. My family would probably say, I go over the top when it comes to decorating or having themed food or anything relating to a party or an event or entertaining because I have fun with that. I’ve also learned over the years to what limit the clutter.

you don’t necessarily need a, to a buy thing to have a big impact. make that theme apparent when you’re decorating, whether that be for a birthday party or when it comes to putting out holiday decorations. we are going to focus specifically on holiday decorations, like Christmas decor. I have noticed over the last couple of years. That I was using less and less of the Christmas decor that we had stored in the big bins and containers. I would take out a few of these things year after year after year and put them up, but then some of them. Really we’re not getting it used.

And it had been a couple years since some of these things had come out of the boxes. I’d open up these bins. Take out what I wanted to use, but I was leaving the same things in it consistently, and it wasn’t serving a purpose anymore. What we were decorating with, we were truly enjoying. I love putting that stuff up.

I like to spend the time doing it and making it. Book festive for the season for whatever holiday that is. And I decorate for Christmas. And I also love to decorate for Halloween. That’s probably my favorite thing to decorate for. holidays throughout the year might get a couple things.

I was like just some stuff on the mantle and my family room. And I don’t go crazy for anything else. It’s simple. It’s still festive, but it’s very limited compared to what I do for Halloween and Christmas. [00:04:00] The last couple of years, I was noticing that. I was liking the decorations more and more, but I was putting less and less of them out. And I wasn’t just putting these things out because I. Had them because I owned these things because someone gave them to me because maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I bought something and I liked it at one time.

And it went with the style and the decor that I was going for then, but things have changed and I don’t want to have little knickknacks and statues and display items on every surface, just because it’s something that I own and that I am storing. I even get some of this stuff out. I am decorating and I’d move it around the house and think to myself, maybe it’ll look good as the center piece on our dining room table.

Maybe it could go on the kitchen counter, baby. It can go on a shelf over here or in this room, or maybe I’ll take a couple of these little things and make a grouping with them. And then they would look cute together. But what I found was I didn’t like these things at all anymore. They weren’t going with my style and it was just too much.

I had too many things. That really weren’t going together and I didn’t enjoy seeing them out. It was kind of adding to the stress, just like normal cluttered us. Because it was clutter. I didn’t want to have it out. So I wasn’t displaying these items anymore. I was choosing to decorate with different things. Most of those things I’ve also had for a long time, but I was decorating with specific things year after year Also I’ve noticed that I haven’t been purchasing new holiday decor over the last couple of years, because I finally have gotten into the groove with what I like and what looks good and what it fits into my house.

So I have these things and we’re enjoying them and we’re putting them up. [00:06:00] But what to do with those things that are never coming out of the containers and I’m storing them. Year after year after year. If it’s not getting used, why am I storing? It is basically what I’m saying. So, what I did is I went through every container that was labeled for Christmas.

At one time, that was one project. I also did this for Halloween a couple of months prior. And I got rid of quite a few things. But my house still feels festive. there’s decorations up. We have decorations. Hope you have a beautiful trees in different rooms. And when the lights turn on in the evening time, it’s magical.

It has that magical feeling of the season in the house. And it’s filled with all the things that we like. a benefit to this is I have more room in my storage area because I was able to get rid of the bins that we were not using anymore because I got rid of the access. I got rid of the stuff I purge the holiday decor. This, this is often something that gets forgotten about because these things are stored away and we don’t have to deal with them. But why do we want to keep our storage space filled up with stuff that we’re not going to use in the future?

That’s a question I’m asking to you. I want you to think about that. Do you have things that you are storing that you’re not using in your storage space? Whether that’s up on a high shelf in a closet and an attic and a basement. On a rock in your garage, wherever you keep these holiday decorations. If you’re not getting them out.

And this is a pattern year after year after year. This year is your decorating or has your putting things away? Donate the thing is that you don’t like anymore donate the things that you’re not using. The best thing I did to keep the house festive and full of the holiday spirit was to decorate with what we truly love. And to eliminate the rest.

And when I say eliminate, [00:08:00] I mean, donate to donate all the things that we weren’t using or that we don’t have a place for. We don’t have a place to put them out. I’m not holding on to them. I got rid of them. I donated them. I don’t want a home with clutter during the rest of the year. The. I guess probably 11 months of the year.

I don’t want clutter in my house at all. So why would I want to have a clutter when it comes to the holiday decorations? I’m not going to all of the sudden wants to have clutter in the rooms of my house. Simply because this is something I own. It’s a decoration that I have, and there’s a need to take it out of the box with everything else. It really, wasn’t a question for me.

I know that clutter causes stress. I know how long-term having clutter causes many problems, and I don’t want to deal with that overwhelm. I just don’t want to go there. So it made sense on this journey to declutter everything and have an organized home. That is truly simplified. It made sense to purge the holiday decorations too.

If you came to my house right now, you would probably never know that I had just gotten rid of quite a few bags of holiday decor. In the past year. you wouldn’t know that this was a thing because the house feels festive. There’s a lot of decorations out. It looks put together and decorated and you feel that Christmasy holiday spirit. It’s still festive.

It’s full of decorations that are meaningful to us. And I want to enjoy those for four or five, six weeks, however long there they are up and filling up our home. I want to be able to join, enjoy them and not be annoyed because I have so much out or I have things out that I don’t even really like. The bottom [00:10:00] line is decluttering.

The holiday decor was a big, big, big win over here. I’m thankful to have the extra space in my storage area and it’s was so much easier this year to get out the containers of things that were full of items that we wanted to put up. It made decorating so much easier because we did not have to sort through. Boxes thing. Is that most of it wasn’t getting put up anyway. Another thing I have done.

And a lot of people think this is crazy is we have an artificial tree is our main Christmas tree. And I decorated it one year with. intention. took floral wire and attached the ornaments. That way. So they’re secure on the branches. They’re not going to fall off and I don’t take through the ornaments off of that tree anymore.

We take it down into our basement. We have a storage room and then I cover it with. Uh, the like a plasticky tarp thing that you would normally use for painting. So it doesn’t get any dust on it. And the next year, when it’s Christmas time, I take that off. We bring it back up the steps, set it up, fluff it up a little bit, and it’s ready to go.

That has saved a huge amount of time. If you have this space, I know most people, unless you have a storage room someplace. Uh, Christmas tree is not going to fit in the little hole that gets you into your attic and the ceiling. But if you have this face, that has been something that has been a huge time-saver in terms of setting up a Christmas decorations as well. That’s kind of just a fun little bonus that I didn’t even think about sharing when I was going to do this episode, but. That is something else that we do. So. Our house is full of decorations.

It does feel festive, but the decluttering of the holiday decoration saved me, saved me a huge [00:12:00]amount of time decorating this year. It was very helpful when I was putting up my Halloween decorations and it was helpful with the Christmas decorations as well. If you notice that you have things that you aren’t using year after year after year, And you are thinking about decluttering.

about decluttering, your holiday decorations.

Do you cluttering? What is in those storage containers? When you take the decorations down this year. you are spending your time putting them away. This is a great time to do the purging of the items that were left in the containers. Get some donation bags or boxes and place those things in there and take those to the donation center that you use at this time.

So that next year you get to open these boxes and you are greeted with treasures that come out, uh, for a few weeks of the year. And these are your holiday decorations that you love. And you’re excited to put up and decorate with. It will be so much simpler next year, when you decorate, you will be surrounded by things that you love.

the. spent putting up the decorations will be less. it will be easier to get these things up and not have to deal with all of the extra things that you weren’t using anyway. And you will be, and someone else will benefit from the thing is they aren’t your style anymore, that you don’t love that you don’t have the space to use.

Someone else will get to use those because you are donating them rather than have, rather than having them. Be stored collecting dust in their bins and containers all year. I hope you are having a fat, fantastic holiday season. We have a one more episode of the intentional edit podcast in 2023. It will be on. Tuesday.

And then we were taking a little break for the holidays and I will see you back in the new year. thank you for listening today. And. I’ll be back [00:14:00] on Tuesday for the final episode of 2023.