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Where are you, Christmas? Packed away with care

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published December 29, 2006

Each year, come New Year's Day, I start thinking about taking down the holiday decorations and packing them away until the next year.

It's a bittersweet feeling, knowing the season is over yet facing a fresh start - a chance to clean the house and coax things back into a manageable order.

All those beautiful decorations start to feel a bit musty, losing their magic without the background of the holiday season.

Some years, I've tried leaving things up and dressing them up differently: a small tabletop tree becomes a Valentine's Day tree when it's adorned with paper hearts; a wreath bedecked with shells doubles as a beach-themed door decoration; anything with snowflakes earns its keep as a "winter accessory."

Yet, after a few years of trying to stretch the holiday season into spring, I've decided to pack everything away for good this year. Storing ornaments has earned its own organizational system right alongside master-bedroom closets and those deep, custom kitchen drawers that have replaced cabinets for better access.

Seven-drawer ornament chests, holiday stemware cases and wing-lid decoration storage boxes have all made their way into the organizational vernacular. After pulling out my ornaments this year - all stored in sandwich bags and tissue paper in a plastic bin - I discovered that most of my favorite hot pink glass globes had gotten scratched in the storage process.

Better Homes and Gardens suggests storing like items together. Ornaments and faux evergreen from a mantel display should be packed together. Clear plastic storage tubs and labels also keep the process organized, as does packing medium-sized round ornaments back in their original boxes or in specially divided ornament trays. Larger, oddly shaped ornaments should be packed in protective wrapping such as bubble wrap or foam. Layer flat ornaments such as icicles and snowflakes and then stack them between pieces of tissue and store them in labeled shoeboxes. Martha Stewart, www.marthastewart.com, suggests lining the bottom of a plastic storage bin with corrugated cardboard and attaching paper cups to the cardboard with a hot-glue gun. Ornaments can be wrapped in tissue and stored safely inside.

This year, I launched a search for the best ornament/holiday decor storage containers. Here's what I found:

- The Container Store, www.containerstore.com, offers a good selection of bins, boxes and chests to stow away ornaments, lights and garland. Options for the most enthusiastic collectors include archival ornament storage boxes ($19.99 to $24.99;) and wreath storage boxes ($9.99).

- At Amazon.com, I discovered three-tier Snap and Stack ornament boxes ($18.99), a 60-quart clear plastic box with dividers for 45 ornaments ($17.74) and a six-drawer plastic ornament storage chest ($34.99).

- Bronner's Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, Mich., www.bronners.com, sells its own 24-compartment storage box ($14.99) and a 48-compartment storage box ($19.99).

- Frontgate, www.frontgate. com, stocks holiday tree-storage bags made of sturdy polyester and outfitted with handles. The bag ($89 to $99) keeps an artificial tree standing, fully assembled and ready to go for the next year.

[Last modified December 28, 2006, 11:15:11]