With November winding down, the busiest and most magical time of the year is here! Between family schedules, holiday shopping, and time with loved ones, the last thing we need is a challenging time decorating the house. Ditch tangled lights and garland that won’t stay in place with the help of these holiday hacks for decorating your home!
Start with Storage
There is no worse feeling than digging out the decoration boxes just to find a giant pile of lights all tangled together. Start the decoration process off on the right foot by incorporating some simple organization when it comes to storing your holiday decorations. For holiday lights, any kind of organization divider will be the best option for keeping lights untangled. This could look like wrapping individual strands around a piece of cardboard to slide into a box or using hanging shoe organizers to separate light strands. For larger ornaments, egg cartons or even coffee filters in a shoe box can be helpful DIY ways to keep them safe from breaking. Whatever way works best for you, getting organized from the start will help make the entire process so much smoother!
Pro-Tip: Organize your holiday decorations by rooms in your home. For example, put all of your living room decorations in boxes labeled as such. This will help in keeping all of your room-specific decorations organized and easy to put up and put away!
Decorating the Tree
When it comes to decorating the tree, everyone has a different approach, especially if you have a household with small children or pets who can make keeping ornaments on the tree a bit of a challenge. Cat owners know that sometimes non-breakable ornaments are a must and the act of constantly putting ornaments back on the tree is a daily occurrence during the holidays. In these cases, zip-tying ornaments is a great option to keep them secure all season long. When it comes to heavier decorations, pipe-cleaners are a great trick to keeping them sturdy and to keep branches from slumping.
Pro-Tip: Decorate your tree from the top down! From the lights, to the ornaments, decorating from the top down will help in keeping things dispersed and more aligned than starting from the bottom.
Hanging Decor
When it comes to hanging garland or other wall decor, one of the most frustrating parts can be getting it to stay up. Avoid excessive nail holes by opting for damage-free command hooks! They come in all shapes, sizes, and weight-holding options and will be sure to make the process of decorating and undecorating seamless!
Outdoor Lighting
Fighting the wet and cold weather is enough on its own to deal with when it comes to decorating the exterior of your home for the holidays, so make the actual decorating part as simple as possible! Similar to the storage tips, organize and label the outdoor lights by where they go and wrap them up in a way where you know they won’t be tangled together. When it comes to hanging lights on gutters, windows, deck railings or rooflines, use light clips to keep everything in place and secure, working from the top down. Once everything looks right, use zip-ties to keep it all in place! For ground lighting, net lighting works best on bushes to cover more surface area, lawn stakes are the easiest way to decorate walkways and driveways by keeping lights suspended, and for larger trees, light strands with more distance between bulbs will help allow you to get a tighter wrap around the tree!
Pro-Tip: Always buy more lights than you think you’ll need!
With these holiday hacks, you and your home will be ready for the season with less stress and more joy!
Real Estate Blog by Guy DuVall 