What is the best way to organize seasonal items?
Even though you're using seasonal items seasonally its still very important to organize them. In fact its more important because you're only using them once a yea, lets say, and so you need to have them really efficiently organized and put away so that you know where they are and you have a good idea of what you've got there. When it comes to seasonal clothing, I always recommend putting them into nice plastic or if you can afford Cedar lined containers or if not put Cedar balls in there. Label the outside of the container, if it's ski clothes – if you have a lot of equipment like that maybe break it down to each member of your family and each person gets a bin so when you're ready to go on a ski trip, everyone can go into their on bin a figure out what their going to pack and what they are going to take with them. That's also a really good way to know when your children are outgrowing their clothes, you can go through it and say “Oh, we're going to need to get new long-Johns this year. We're going to need to change this out”. When it comes to Holiday items there are lots and lots of choices of how to pack-up your Holiday items. I do think it's important to label the outside of these boxes so you know which ones are the ornaments, which one is the lights, which one has all the miscellaneous toys or the various things you might have for your Holiday. And when you're storing these things in your attic, or your basement, store them in groups – store all the Christmas things in one area, all the Halloween things in one area or next to it but all together. The Easter things, the Valentine things – what ever things you have, you want tot make sure that its all grouped together that when you do go to get it, you're not searching all over your basement searching all over for you're Holiday stuff you know where all the Christmas stuff is. A lot of times when I'm done organizing an attic or basement or garage I actually make a little drawing, a little map of the space and it's not just good for whoever my client is, it's actually good for you to do for yourself because you will forget what's down there and where it is – you're not going their everyday so its very easy to forget that. Its good for you to know, “Okay, here's where all my Holiday items are” and you can keep that right at the door of your basement or right at the entry of the garage so that you can walk in and there's the map and you know exactly where everything is and it doesn't have to be elaborate, it can be very, very simple. So really think about what you're storing, what's the right container for it and think about where you're putting it.
