Cleaning up After Christmas If preparing for Christmas is one of the happiest times for families, then cleaning up after Christmas has to be the most depressing time for families. Every ornament your take off and every scrap of wrapping paper you throw away testify to the fact that the holidays are over. It will be another 11 months before you can get ready for the joyous season again. Of course you could always keep the decorations up and virtually celebrate the holiday season every day for an entire year. Some might call you strange, but at least you won’t lose that warm fuzzy feeling. Most people don’t go that route though, although they will delay it for as long as possible. The day finally comes when they have to take down the decorations: the ornaments, tree and lights. Then, not only is it a sad day to be at home, but it’s also an overwhelming day.
Taking Down the Tree Taking it down is a big task. You never realized how much time it took you to put all of it up. If it’s your first time doing it, you may not know what to do or how to go about it. What should you do with the ornaments? What about the tree or the lights? You have to decide what to dispose of and how to do it, as well as figure out where to store everything else. Here are a few pointers to help you get through this time. Start with the ornaments and other small decorations around the house.
Where does Everything Go? Your first task will be to separate them into 2 piles: things to throw away and things to keep. Most paper items, cheap plastics and miscellaneous decorations—like cotton wool for the manger scene—can be thrown out. You can keep whatever means something to you, but a lot of these items are cheaply replaced. Getting rid of them leaves your more room to pack, and fresh decorative items every year. Find the additional things that aren’t keepsakes and get rid of those. Then you can start packing away ornaments. Hopefully you kept all the packaging your decorations came in. Except for the wreath
and the lights, most of these things can go back into the boxes they came in for easy packaging and safe keeping. Buy a big plastic box and store all of your decorations in one place. If they don’t fit, buy another one until you have fit everything. What should you do with the Christmas tree? If it’s a fake Christmas tree, then the cleanup is simple; just disassemble it, fold the branches up and stuff it back it in its original box. Store that box away in your garage in a place that it will be out of the way and easy to find for the next season. With a real Christmas tree, you can find a community drop-off site to take them to. They will dispose of the tree properly. Or you can break the tree down and make useful items for your home or decoration pieces for next year. Whichever you choose, make sure you do it so it doesn’t just die in your home. With the tree taken care of and the decorations stored into large boxes, you’re set for the rest of the year. A nice idea to do to fight the sadness that follows putting the tree away is to leave one part of the decorations of for the rest of the year. Put a favorite decoration item on the wall to remind you of the joy of Christmas; that way it’s not really gone. Clean site offers residents dumpster rentals in Lehi for those that need to dispose of a lot of trash. They are great for a neighborhood to throw their old Christmas trees in.