The everyday household items you can use to store Christmas decorations safely, easily and for free

Sadly, Christmas is now well and truly over, which means that, if you haven’t already, it’s high time to start packing away those decorations for another 11 months. But rather than shelling out on expensive decoration storage, try reusing these household items to store Christmas decorations for free.

While it can be a lengthy and rather dull process, it’s essential to store away your Christmas decor properly, to ensure that it stays in as good a condition. It’s something your future self will thank you for when returning to neatly organised and damage-free decorations, ready to put up again come December 2024.

DIY Christmas decoration storage

So what are the best ways to store your Christmas decorations, be it tree baubles, or even the tree itself? On Instagram, we've spied some ingenious tricks for stashing your decor using household items you’re likely to already have to hand. So there's no need to buy any special storage!

1. Use egg boxes for delicate items

If you’ve usually chuck your egg boxes straight into the recycling, try keeping them aside this year for handy DIY storage idea. 

Whether you’re looking to store a tiny mantelpiece decoration, or your favourite tree baubles, egg containers and their oval slots provide the perfect place to pop said items into, with some helpful protection provided in the form of the soft egg box lid, too. Genius!

Decor can even be stored across the slots for larger items, and feel free to stack items on top of one another here, as long as they aren’t breakable. 

A video on Dunelm's Instagram advises putting your egg boxes into another, larger box, for extra protection from damage.

2. Utilise old sheets for tree storage

Plenty of us will store our artificial trees in the now tatty old cardboard boxes they came in – but if you have any old bed sheets lying around that you don’t want to keep, but aren’t sure what to do with, it's worth knowing that they can provide a brilliantly useful way to store your Christmas tree instead of investing in a Christmas tree storage bag.

This trick is easy enough; all you need to do is wrap your tree within said sheets.

This storage method will also ensure your tree doesn’t get squashed and misshapen as it might in a box, and will also allow you to easily carry it out again next December.

3. Stash paper decor in envelopes

Envelopes make ideal sleeves for paper decorations, or even kid’s drawings and special cards. This is a hack that our Deputy Digital Editor Rebecca Knight uses herself. 'I have a lot of paper decorations that I want to keep protected which I slip into envelopes and folders to protect. It works a treat and they always come out looking like new.'

Whether you have larger, A4 envelopes at home, or smaller envelopes designed for letters, these can provide a brilliant way to safely stash away thinner paper decor or other slimline Christmas paraphernalia. 

Just make sure to place your items in the envelope gently; you don’t want to inadvertently crush any paper decor as you’re putting things away.

4. Tie lights around a crisp tube

This Christmas tree light hack is another favourite of Rebecca's. Rarely do we eat Pringles more than at Christmas time – so if you’ve got an empty tube left that hasn’t yet gone in the recycling, using it can be a great way store your Christmas lights.

 All you need to do is cut two small slit in the top of the tube, and place one end of the lights within the first slit. This will allow you to locate the end of your lights easily come next December.

Then, wrap your lights continuously around the Pringles tube (don’t be afraid to layer!) before slotting the other end of the lights in the other slit. And there you have it – lights that won’t tangle and will be 10x easier to unravel in 11 months time! 

'I tried this hack for the first time last year and it was a game-changer when it came to putting the lights on the tree this year. The best part about using a Pringles tube is you can stow the plug away inside and pop the lid on,' says Rebecca.

Do your future self a favour and wrap your decorations up properly.