Little project: managing Christmas decor

 Last week I did more purging in the garage.  {that's just going to be a regular task until everything I have left is something I want to keep and I know exactly where it is.}

Out went the outside Christmas lights that frustrated me so last year.  That led me to moving The Girl's things so that I had better access to my crafts dresser and the Christmas decor.  Then, I decided to go through the Christmas stuff and whittle it down, including the kids' ornaments.

I unwrapped them all and made piles of them on my bed - a big enough surface for 80 plus ornaments.

There was an ornament for each kid up to age 20.  Also, some homemade ones and some mementos from elementary school, along with cute ornament tie-ons they each gifted each other.

The flat paper ones went into a zip lock bag, mostly things they made in school.

These have great sentimental value. A few happy tears were shed as I was going through everything.  We did have some pretty great Christmases when my kids were little.  And it turns out, summer is a good time to go through it all and organize it.

In these clear $4 boxes from Target, I placed flat things on the bottom, layered heavy to light weight ornaments, lined the boxed ones on the sides, then layers of crushed tissue paper all around to cushion the rest.  No sense in wrapping each ornament, they aren't going to get jostled around.

I put everyone's initials on their box.  Someday they will come across these and know what they are.  And I'm letting the boxes live in the top of my closet because I have oodles of empty space in there.

I didn't pack the stockings in there - I still want to fill my peeps a stocking a little while longer...  Swedish death cleaning of the Christmas decor is complete and the rest of the stuff I use fits into three reasonable storage containers that can live in the garage.

Gina