Packing Away Christmas Made Easy

Are you dreading storing Christmas decorations and procrastinating packing everything away? I always love Christmastime and decorating for holidays, but packing away all the holiday decorations is never as much fun. We have enjoyed Christmas music over the season. So, it just doesn’t have the same joy that it brought in the beginning of the season. The typical Christmas cookies and snacks are out too! We’ve already indulged so much. So how do we add some joy to packing up all our Christmas decorations?

Storing Christmas Tips

As you get ready to begin packing away your Christmas decorations, having a plan helps a lot. We are sharing our tips for how we encourage our kids to help us with this process. It’s all about breaking down this task into manageable chunks to encourage our kids to help. We begin by setting the mood, then we begin with the tree, and of course, label all your boxes.

Setting the Mood for Storing Christmas

First, we find some wonderful music and snacks/drinks to enjoy. Which music doesn’t really matter. However, since we are a dual language family, we usually play some Spanish music while packing up our decorations. We like something high energy and upbeat to keep our spirits high!

Same for snacks! Whatever you enjoy will work, but having plenty is a must. We love hot chocolate (or chocolate milk for my littles), popcorn, and trail mix cups. We also love to prepare a treat first thing in the morning that will need to bake or freeze, so we have something to look forward to when we finish. Having an finishing reward is so helpful with getting everyone in the mood to work.

Storing Christmas Tree First

Second, we always start with the tree. This is the most time consuming job when packing up our decorations because the majority of our decorations are on the tree. The kids help to take down the decorations, while I wrap and box them up. It goes pretty fast because there are 4 of them taking down decorations and they get most of them down rather quickly. Plus, doing it together is much more fun than trying to pack everything away alone.

We have the kids take down the ornaments, both store bought and handmade. Then I will wrap them into newspapers. We save the ads from Christmas until packing up and usually have enough newspapers. However, if you want to get the bulk of the newspaper needed, just save the Black Friday ads. We put all the newspaper in our empty Christmas bins until we need it.

We can usually wrap 3 – 4 ornaments in a large piece of newspaper. This is great for us since I usually get handed 3 – 4 ornaments at a time with 4 amazing helpers. Start at one corner, roll up to cover. Then jump to the next corner and roll in. For our homemade ornaments, I usually wrap each on individually in a separate smaller sheet of newspaper. This gives a little extra protection to those really special ornaments.

Plan Breaks as You Are Storing Christmas

Third, as the kids need a break, I ask them to gather the Christmas decorations from around the house. This is always a little fun for them because it’s like a scavenger hunt. They have to try to find everything before I have all the ornaments packed away. The kids gather all the garlands, snowmen, Santas, elves, and other wintertime decorations from around the house.

When they start to get bored of finding ornaments or they start to bicker, I just send 1 or all to go find a Christmas decoration that needs to be packed up, then they help searching for ornaments on the tree again. We try to get the bulk of the ornaments off the Christmas tree before starting on the extras since we only have so many. We never want to run out of decorations before the entire Christmas tree is packed up.

You can also plan for specific snack, drink, or even dance breaks too! When our kids are really struggling to help, we set a timer for 15 minutes. This can motivate them to focus for a bit and get a lot of the work completed. Additionally, 15 minutes really isn’t all that long, so they are usually willing to give that time, especially if there is a promise of a treat at the end.

You can also set a number of ornaments to find. Everyone can work together to take 100 ornaments off the tree. On the other hand, you could give each person their own goal of finding 20 ornaments. Either way you are making the larger task seem much more manageable when you break it up. For more suggestions, be sure to check out our Math Clean Up game post.

It’s Okay to Use More than 1 Day

There is no requirement that you need to finish in one day. Decorating for Christmas usually takes a few days, so we can use more than one day to pack everything away. Plan to complete a little each day, slowly refilling your bins with all the decorations.

Plan for about 20 minutes of packing up a day. You can schedule this early in the morning, right after lunch, or even just before bed. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how much you can accomplish in those 20 minutes. Additionally, our minds can tackle just a few minutes without feeling overwhelmed or put out. These short chunks motivate us and we find that we often tend to want to do a little bit more since we feel so amazing for accomplishing our goal.

Label, Label, Label

We have large bins to hold all our Christmas decorations that we label with Christmas and keep in our basement storage room. This makes it easy to store and easy to take out when it’s time to decorate too! We also store our Christmas tree stand with our bins. Everything is easy to locate and if you find something later, it’s easy enough to add into the correct bin.

We keep 4 bins for Christmas. I know it seems like a lot! We have one bin just for outdoor lights. A second bin is for our indoor lights and garland. The third bin is or all our Christmas Tree ornaments. We find it best to keep these together. The last bin is for all our decorations for around the house. Be sure to label the outside of each bin too! You will want to know which bin is which when you find that hidden ornament or decoration after you finish packing everything away.

When to Begin Storing Away Christmas

One thing we love to do is start packing away on New Year’s Eve. It may seem a little early to take down Christmas, but we have a process to motivate our children on this day specifically. Additionally our kids love to stay awake later and part of our deal is that they need to help with storing Christmas to get this privilege.

Some families love to save storing Christmas until a week or two after the holiday. That’s okay too! My only suggestion is to either pack up Christmas before winter break ends for your children or on the weekend after your children return to school so that they can help too. Everyone in the family enjoyed the decorations, so everyone can help with the packing.

Motivation for Storing Christmas on New Year’s Eve

We like to start the process on New Year’s Eve for a few reasons. Making this a family tradition is a great way to make sure everything gets packed up just the way you like it. Additionally, you will enjoy this next year when you go to decorate for Christmas again because everything is easy to find.

1. Everyone wants to stay up late tonight, so this particular day is very motivating. We enjoy our extra family time while storing Christmas away for the year.
2. We replace ornaments with our resolutions and reflections from the year. You can read more about this in Kid-friendly New Year’s Eve. In addition, we can still enjoy our Christmas tree a few more days. We just have paper decorations that are easy to throw away when it’s time to store or dispose of the Christmas tree.
3. If you use a real tree, we find that the needles aren’t too dry and as prickly when we take the ornaments down on New Year’s Eve. This is a real plus when the kids are helping so they don’t hurt their hands or become wary of the tree.
4. We plan special snacks, drinks, and activities for this evening to break up the packing of ornaments. Having these little breaks really helps to keep everyone in the mood. More on this in our New Year’s Eve post too.
5. We can celebrate all our hard work with our New Year’s Eve celebration with our kids. Knowing that something special is coming helps to keep our spirits high and give us the extra boost we need.
6. And of course, we haven’t totally exhausted our love of Christmas music and cookies just yet. So we can enjoy those too!

Storing Christmas Before the Kids Go Back to School

Another great time to pack up the Christmas decoration is before the kids go back to school. This may seem a little early to some families who really want to enjoy their tree a little longer, and that’s okay. Every family needs to decide the perfect time for them. We love packing up before the end of winter break for so many different reasons.

1. The kids are home and we have more time. While the kids are still home for winter break, we have the entire day to store away Christmas if we need it. We can plan for as many breaks as we want throughout the day and everyone can help. There is no rush and no scramble to get it done just before bed.
2. Everyone is more rested too. Waiting until the kids go back to school means that your kids will be more tired. We always find that the first week back to school after winter break is similar to the first week back to school in the fall. Our kids are exhausted from learning all day. They need a really downtime break when they get home and many times even need a nap.
3. This may sound silly, but having Christmas packed up before the kids go back to school in January, helps to put us back into the school mind frame. Once Christmas is all put away, we shift our thinking from break time to school time. Thus, making that first day back in school a little easier on everyone. We feel accomplished and ready to go back instead of wishing for just a few more days.

Connect with Us for More Tips for Navigating Parenting

Having the kids help turns an all day activity into just over an hour to pack away all the Christmas decorations and bins! That is amazing and saves parents so much time! Not only will you be able to enjoy some extra family time, but you might even sneak in a little time for you too! Planning Christmas with a little one? Read out Christmas with Toddlers/Infants post. Looking for a creative way to make cleaning up more fun, try out Clean Up Math Game. As you look ahead to the New Year, be sure to head over to our post on Celebrating Valentine’s Day with kids too.

We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a comment below and let us know your favorite strategies for packing up holiday decorations and returning to the normal routine of every day. Wishing for a little more from us, join our growing family of newsletter subscribers by signing up below. We can’t wait to connect with you and share our favorite practical solutions to real-life parenting woes as well as some freebies to help you on your journey.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.