How to Properly Store Christmas Garland

As an interior designer in Georgia, I enjoy decorating Christmas garland for my clients. Christmas garland helps make your house look festive during the holidays. Now that Christmas is over it is time to take the Christmas garland down from your staircase, mantel, doorway and front door area.

I have some suggestions for you that I do for my clients to help you be able to put the garland away with ease. Not only do you want to put the garland away, but you also want to store it away correctly until next year.

Before you take the garland off of the staircase to store, mark it properly. Cut thin strips of paper long enough to wrap around the entire circumference of the garland and then staple it into place. You will write information on each of these strips of paper.

Examples of what information will be written on the pieces of paper are “top of the staircase," “bottom of the staircase” and “corner area." You will also want to attach a strip of paper with the information on it in regards to where you attached the garland with the swoop or swag sections of the garland on your stairway. 

I write “6 (or whatever number it is) spinals down." Writing all of this information on the strips of paper will save you so much time and aggregation when you start decorating your home next year. Some people tag their garland with large sticky labels. I do not use the sticky labels anymore to label the garland because I see that they detach themselves when I bring the garland down from the attic from year to year. If you are planning to store your garland in the basement the sticky labels probably will not come off as easily.

After you have untwisted your extra-long twisty tie that is connecting your garland to your stairway and you have marked the tied area on your garland with the paper, you need to store it away. You can search the web about many different ways to store your garland from year to year. I want you to know a few of the ideas I have tried that works well for me and for my clients.  

You can store the garland in a large plastic bin or a large Christmas tree bag. I have wrapped garland in plastic dry cleaning bags too. After I wrap multiple pieces of plastic around the garland it looks like a long snake. If you have a long shelving area in your home you can lay your garland flat all wrapped up and store it there.  If you do not have a shelf to store your garland you can use the rafters in the attic.

I went to the store and bought very long screws or strong nails. They need to be 4” or you can use large cup hooks. I screwed the long screws into many rafter pieces of wood in the attic. Then I took long pieces of rags and tied them into knots around the circumference of the plastic wrapped garland. I then hooked the rags onto the screws that I screwed into the rafters. It looked like a long straight snake curved into a half of a circle after it was all hung up.

Decorating for Christmas with garland is so festive and beautiful. Learning how to properly store your garland away is such a wise thing to do to save time next year.