Life Hack: How to safely store away your Christmas decorations as holiday season ends

Keep delicate items safe and reduce your stress when decorating next Christmas

Invest in a 'tree bag' to protect your artificial Christmas tree if the original box has become too battered to be of use

January 6 is Nollaig na mBan, also known as Women’s Little Christmas. While better known these days as a social event for women, it is also the very last day of Christmas so traditionally in Ireland, all Christmas decorations are removed by that date.

With that in mind, there’s no better time to share some handy tips for storing those decorations for the next 11 months, various ways to keep delicate items safe while also reducing your stress at the end of 2026 when you go looking for them once more.

How to sort decorations for storage

Possibly the most crucial step in any storage is to sort through what you have and decide what can be recycled or donated to save even more space in your home.

The very best time to do this is when you are taking down your decorations — you can actually remember whether they added to the festive atmosphere or if they were just collecting dust for Christmas. Plus, you can either set aside to mend or remove broken items while you’re organising them.

At this stage, another useful caution is to remove batteries from lights, etc, before packing them away to remove any risk of accidental fire while they are in storage. You can never be too cautious when it comes to this.

Keep similar items together to make everything easier to find next Christmas: all lights go together, all ornaments in another section, and so on. I recommend clear plastic storage boxes for this, as you will be able to identify those categories at a glance when unpacking in December.

How to protect fragile decorations

What you don’t want to happen is to open your decorations next year only to find beloved items ruined and broken due to how they were packed.

Make sure to wrap fragile ornaments in tissue paper or newspaper to protect them from any knocks or bangs as they are being stored.

Small, delicate ornaments can be further protected by putting them inside an old egg carton or even a muffin tin for a strong outer shell.

Within boxes, you can use cardboard to make dividers to prevent ornaments from knocking against each other and becoming damaged.

How to prevent tangled lights

Have you faced the struggle of detangling fairy lights, with the added horror of realising it’s actually multiple lights entangled in each other?

Save yourself from that nightmare by wrapping each set of lights around individual pieces of cardboard or empty kitchen paper rolls. You can secure the ends of the lights in place with string, elastic bands or similar.

It can also be difficult to identify which lights are which when they are coming out of storage, often resulting in too-short lights on a tree, etc.

To avoid this confusion, write a brief description on the cardboard you are wrapping them around: a note such as the length, if you remember it, the colour of the lights, or the location they are typically displayed in will make your decorating much easier next time.

How to maintain shapes

If you reuse an artificial tree, wreath, or garland each year, you probably fret about refluffing them each December after 11 months of being squashed into storage. Luckily, the way you store these can help them to maintain their shape and thickness while packed away.

For artificial Christmas trees, collapse the sections and store them in the tree’s original box. If the box becomes too battered, invest in a ‘tree bag’ to protect the focal point of your festivities. Garlands can be wrapped around coat hangers or tubes to prevent them from being crushed, while wreaths should be hung up, perhaps in a spare wardrobe or rail, or else stored in a flat box to maintain their shape.

How to make the most of space

If you have a limited area to store your decorations in, there are ways to maximise this. The way you stack your storage boxes will go some way to protect fragile items: keep heavier boxes at the bottom and lighter ones on top.

For soft items like stockings and plush decorations, consider using vacuum bags to make them smaller and easier to fit. Smaller items can also be stored under a bed during the year, making the most of under-utilised spaces around your home.