Holiday decoration storage: 10 tips for Halloween, Hanukkah, Christmas and more

Pack in reverse: the first thing you'll need goes in last

Every holiday decorates in an order. Halloween: the porch and door first, then the yard, then the indoor bits. Christmas: tree up, lights on, garland, ornaments, mantel. Hanukkah: the menorah and candles come out on night one, the garlands and the table things later. Take-down runs backwards, so the last thing you put up is the first thing you pack, which buries the things you'll want first next year. Resist that. Pack the fiddly indoor pieces first and the “first night” items last, so the tote opens next year with the porch lights, the tree stand or the menorah on top. If you stack totes, the first-out tote goes on top or at the front.

One tote per holiday, one lid colour per holiday, one “first hour” box each

Mixed holiday totes are how the tree topper ends up under the skeleton. Give each holiday its own tote (or set of totes) and its own lid colour so you can read the shelf from the car: orange for Halloween, blue or white for Hanukkah, green or red for Christmas, pastel for Easter, red-white-and-blue for the Fourth. Most tote brands sell the same bin with different lids; if yours doesn't, a strip of coloured tape across the short side does the same job. Then give each holiday a small “first hour” box inside its stack: extension cords, timers, hooks, zip ties and spare fuses for Halloween; the menorah, a box of candles and matches for Hanukkah; the tree-stand bolts, timer and hooks for Christmas. If one holiday fills more than three totes, split by room (porch, living room, table) within the colour. A sukkah's paper chains and hanging fruit, or a Passover table's runner and haggadot, each get one tote of their own rather than a corner of someone else's.

Wind lights on something flat, test them, bag each strand

Purple and orange Halloween strings, blue and white Hanukkah lights, the Christmas lights, the fairy lights for the sukkah: they all tangle the same way, because a strand left loose is free to move. Wind each string around a rigid card (a cut-down piece of cardboard with a notch at each end), a cord reel or a dedicated spool, tuck the plug under the last wrap, and put each wound strand in its own zip-top bag with a slip of paper saying where it hangs: “porch rail, 2 of 3.” Test every strand before it goes in; a dead string in January costs a minute, the same string in late November costs a store trip. Light makers also warn that a sealed bin left in direct summer sun gets hot enough to soften wire insulation and shorten LED life, which is one more reason lights live in the shade.

Inflatables: bone dry, then bagged with their own blower, stakes and tethers

Yard inflatables (the Halloween pumpkin, the snowman, the Fourth of July eagle) fail in storage for one reason: they go away damp. Gemmy, which makes most of the Airblown inflatables sold in the US, is blunt about it: do not store an inflatable while wet; allow it to dry completely first. Run the blower indoors for an hour or lay the inflatable out in the garage overnight, wipe off the mud with a damp cloth and mild detergent, and only then fold it loosely. Then keep the whole kit together: the blower unit, its cord, the stakes and the tether cords go in one bag with the inflatable, because a blower stored in a different tote is an inflatable that doesn't go up next year. Never stack anything heavy on the folded fabric, and keep it off a concrete floor.

Powered props: batteries out, tanks empty, remotes taped to the box

Animatronics, light-up figures, singing ornaments, the electric menorah and the fog machine all go ten months without being touched, which is exactly when batteries leak. Energizer and Duracell both advise removing batteries from any device that won't be used for an extended period; a leaking alkaline cell corrodes the contacts and the prop is dead on arrival next year. Pull them, store them at room temperature in a bag taped inside the lid, and buy fresh in the autumn. Tape the remote, the adapter and the instruction sheet to the inside of the prop's box, and store large animatronics upright in their original packaging with the head wrapped. For an electric menorah, pull the batteries and keep a spare bulb in its box.

Fog machines have an extra rule. Gemmy's instruction is to never store a fog machine with fluid inside, because it hardens and clogs the pump; Chauvet DJ's manuals say to drain the tank before storing and to run a cleaning solution through the machine first. Some fluid makers prefer a little of their own fluid left in the lines, so follow the manual for your machine. Unopened fog fluid keeps at room temperature in its sealed bottle; discard it if it has gone cloudy. No fog fluid, and no fog machine, in the attic.

Wrap the breakables, stuff the masks

Glass and ceramic ornaments want a divided tray or a box with cardboard cells, one per cell, with plain white or acid-free tissue around the delicate ones; never newspaper, whose ink transfers onto paint and glitter. A menorah (hanukkiah, the nine-branch one with eight lights plus the shammash) is awkward to pack because its arms bend: wrap each arm loosely in tissue, lay it in its own box or a tote with the boxes of candles beside it, and don't let a heavier tote sit on it. A seder plate, the good serving dishes for Thanksgiving, the ceramic pumpkin: pack them like kitchen plates, on edge with paper between. Latex masks keep their shape stuffed with a plastic bag or an old T-shirt; the mask maker Trick or Treat Studios warns against storing latex on a styrofoam head, because the two materials react and the latex degrades. Photograph the open tray before closing it; it's your “which ornament is missing” record.

Crushables on top, and be honest about the cobwebs

Some decorations don't break, they squash: foam pumpkins and skulls, plastic tombstones, wreaths, garland, bunting, the artificial tree's branch tips. They go on top of a stack, never under it, and wreaths go flat in a wreath box or hang on a hook inside a bag. Garland lies loosely coiled in a long shallow tote or wrapped around a tube; glittered pieces shed onto everything, so they're bagged alone. The artificial tree goes into a zippered bag rather than its shipping box, which splits in a couple of seasons. And the stretchy spider webbing: be realistic. Once it has been pulled across a porch for a month it doesn't fluff back out, so bag whatever is still in its original clump for next year and let the stretched stuff go. Fake cobweb is close to single-use; buying one fresh bag each October is cheaper than the tote space.

Know your house's temperature map before you choose a shelf

Not every decoration can take the attic or the garage. A poorly vented attic can reach 160°F on a hot day according to the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources, and a garage swings from below freezing to well over 100°F. Wax softens and slumps, so Hanukkah candles, Advent candles and any wax decoration are stored flat, in their boxes, in a cool indoor closet; candle makers such as Goose Creek and Homesick put it simply: room temperature, out of heat and sun. Latex masks, glue-based props, battery packs, foam figures and the PVC tips of an artificial tree all degrade in that heat too. Use the attic and garage for the durable bulk and keep the sensitive items in a closet.

Clean the fabric before it goes away for eleven months

Costumes, stockings, tree skirts, the Hanukkah table runner, the sukkah's fabric wall hangings, the Fourth of July bunting: anything wool, silk, felt or fur is what clothes moths and carpet beetles look for, especially with a little food, sweat or face paint on it. The University of Kentucky's entomologists note that larvae need that soil to thrive, and that cleaning items and storing them in tight containers is the protection that works; cedar closets are rated seldom effective and the scent fades. So: launder or dry-clean, dry completely, then into a sealed tote with a cotton pillowcase between fabric and plastic. Costumes hang in breathable garment bags, not dry-cleaning plastic; wigs sit on a foam head (foam is fine for wigs, it's latex that reacts). Don't vacuum-bag anything with structure or foam.

Photograph the open tote, tag it, then shut it for the year

The lid-closing photo is the whole system's memory. Take it top-down in good light with everything in place, then one of the outside so you recognise the tote on the shelf. Next year you check photos instead of opening bins, the person sent to the garage knows which orange lid is the porch tote, and the January audit (what didn't earn its tote space?) happens from the couch. Keep the photo with the tote's location and holiday, because “a bin somewhere” is the failure mode.