how to store holiday garlands

It’s the last day of 2011! Crazy.

I spent most of the day Thursday packing up our Christmas decorations. I always have trouble with my berry garlands — the berries get all stuck together and smashed when I store them — and I have a lot of garlands.

But then I had an idea (all by myself without looking at Pinterest – ha!).

So here it is:

First, I cut down the sides of a big black trash bag and opened it up flat.

Then, I put the garland along one side. And rolled it up like a caterpillar.

Then I taped on a post it note to label the garland.

Ta-da!

When my three-year-old saw what I was up to he was so disappointed that “Christmas is over?!” and at the same time totally thrilled that I had made a giant snake.

After I wrapped up all the garlands, I covered both ends with two more black trash bags and I have one very big, sort-of heavy garland snake. Chris took it up in the attic. I’ll let you know next year if this was a good idea or not…

Just as an FYI: I only used a little scotch tape to hold each snake together because I want to reuse the bags next year. If I had used packing tape or duct tape I think that would make unpacking them trickier.

Happy New Year’s Eve!