It’s that time of year when Christmas is nearly upon us again. So it’s officially time to dust down the baubles, stock up on wrapping paper and stick on the Christmas Classics CD!
However, the weeks leading up to the festive season aren’t just useful for getting into a celebratory mood, they’re also the perfect time to get your house prepared for Christmas. They give you the chance to have a sort-out, make room for all the gifts you’ll receive, and declutter your home for the New Year.
If this seems like a daunting task, here’s some useful tips to help you make the most of the Christmas clearout!
Preparing Your Home for the Festive Season
1. Go through your clothes.
The lead-up to Christmas is the ideal opportunity to sort through your wardrobe. Divide your clothes into piles – garments you’ll definitely wear again soon, garments you won’t wear until the summer (those can go into storage!), and garments that you haven’t worn since 2001, and probably never will wear ever again. Those corduroy flares with the paisley knee-patches can join that pile, definitely!
If you’ve got lots of clothes that you no longer want, consider donating them to your local homeless charity, who will distribute them around the needy people of your home town or city.
2. Sort out the toys.
If you’ve got children, you can almost guarantee that they’ll receive an overwhelming amount of new toys for Christmas, and that many of them will take up ludicrous amounts of space.
To save your home from feeling like a toy-shop / lunatic asylum at Christmas, take the time to go through their toys, and donate any that they’ve grown out of to your local charity shop. Alternatively, you may be able to raise Christmas funds by selling them online. If you think they really wouldn’t be able to bear parting with a particular toy, you can also consider putting them into storage.
3. Check the kitchen cupboards.
If there’s one thing we all like to do at Christmas, it’s eat. Generally speaking, that means eating large quantities of things that our waistlines could really do without. It’s likely that you’ll be buying quite a bit of festive food, particularly if you’ve been saddled with the task of entertaining the in-laws, so taking the time to sort out your kitchen cupboards might be a good idea.
Remember, any food that you don’t think you’ll eat will be gratefully received at your local foodbank, and anything that’s woefully out of date may be better consigned to the dustbin. If you’re left with a lot of odds and ends that need using up, challenge the family to come up with the most inventive recipe possible – the winner is the one who manages to incorporate the most ingredients!
4. Declutter.
If space is a bit of a premium in your property, then think about how you can get rid of some of the clutter, creating a more relaxed, organised atmosphere for Christmas. For example, large items, such as surfboards, bicycles, car-roof boxes and suitcases, are only generally needed at certain times of the year, so you could easily tidy these away in storage.
With smaller items, think about how you could maximise your available space, creating more storage zones. For example, that empty corner by the sofa might be the perfect place to have a narrow chest of drawers, which instantly provides you with more storage options. Invest in some boxes to push under your bed, or some baskets to place on top of the cupboards. In fact, when you start to survey your home, you’ll be amazed how much available space there is to store stuff!
5. Sort out the spare room.
If you’re having your Great Auntie Mabel over for Christmas, chances are she won’t relish the prospect of sharing your spare room with an overwhelming amount of junk. If you, like many others across the country, use your spare room as a dumping ground for your coats, towels, work-benches, running machines (do you ever use it?) and broken laptops, then now is the time to tidy it up a bit.
Chances are that a lot of the things in your spare room could be easily squirrelled away into a local storage unit, or even disposed of completely if they’re broken beyond repair.
6. Find a space for Christmas decorations.
There’s nothing more festively fun that decking the halls (or lounges and kitchens) with holly. Children especially relish the task of decorating the Christmas tree, hanging tinsel round the bookshelves and gluing home-made decorations to the windows.
However, think about where you’ll put all your decorations when the festive season is over. If you’re fortunate enough to have a large attic, then this is obviously the best solution (though make sure you seal everything up to prevent your decorations getting dusty). However, if you don’t have much space at home, consider renting out a storage unit. Failing that, ask your parents, very nicely, if they’d consider letting you use their garage. And if they say yes, a big, thankful box of chocolates is in order!
Getting Decluttered for Christmas
Getting your home blissfully clutter-free for Christmas can offer significant psychological benefits too. Creating an organised living environment can instantly help to calm the mind… which is exactly what you need when you’re rushing around trying to organise turkey dinners and stocking fillers.
Remember, the task doesn’t need to fall on your shoulders alone. Enlist the help of all the family, and divide the house up into zones. Even the youngest family members can get involved, particularly when it comes to sorting out toys!
If you’re interested in finding out more about renting storage units in Glasgow, then simply get in touch with our team today. We’ve got a wide variety of storage solutions, to house everything from your exercise equipment (you’ll be wanting that back in the New Year, we’re sure!) to your valuables.
To find out more, just call 0141 221 4727 today.
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