Decorating Your Home This Fall Without Falling into Chaos
I absolutely LOVE the later half of the year! It’s like one fun event after another. We go from high school, college and NFL football, to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and College Bowl games, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza and then New Years Eve! It almost feels like there is something to celebrate on a weekly basis in the fall. And being who I am, I embrace the opportunity to turn every one of those occasions into a decorating event.
But if you’re as busy as I am, decorating for all those holidays can become overwhelming, so over the years I’ve developed practices that make these daunting tasks very doable. I hope my lessons learned are helpful to you as we approach one of the busiest times of year!
The Chaos Coordinator of Halloween!
Divide…
If you’re an avid decorator like me, you have multiple areas to “dress up” for the season.
My first piece of advice is to divide.
Around mid-September to the beginning of October I start setting out my fall decorations. I find it best to divide my home into vignettes then tackle those areas piece by piece. I place everything I need for each area in bins labeled for those respective areas. That way I can easily decorate each area with just a few minutes.
And Conquer.
After all of my items are divided into their respective areas, it’s time to conquer the task a little at a time. For example, when I have a little extra time, I’ll take out my Halloween foyer bin and start decorating that particular vignette.
Pro Tip: Include a picture of the decorated area in each storage bin. This way, you can quickly remove the items not needed for this holiday vignette and get to decorating with exactly the elements you need. Decorating from a picture helps take some of the pressure off, and even makes the task easy (and fun) to pass along! Over the years I’ve been able to hand off the foyer, mantle and other simple areas to my children to decorate. It’s fun getting the whole family involved.
Then, Hit Reverse!
When it’s time to return to “normal,” I reverse the process. Taking down the decorations is just as easy when using this method. I can easily un-decorate a little at a time without turning my house upside down in the process. This makes decorating year after year a fun activity rather than a chore.
