We've got our routine down now so that it really only takes less than an hour to break down all of our Christmas decorating in the house.

Before, we’d go in the attic, dig out five containers of various sizes, awkwardly slide or hand them down, find what we want, set it up, force everything else into random nooks and crannies to make use of it, and then stash the containers away. Easily a few hours of time spent. Then there are the lights outside that required taking down a ladder and putting everything up and then putting the ladder away.

As of about three years ago, we identified the must-have decorations and set them up for the holiday while either stashing the rest away in the attic or donating them. We still decorate really nicely and our house is very festive for us but it’s half what we used to do. 

Then we got two new large tub containers from Costco that are uniform in size and use them to store the must-haves in the garage instead of the attic. Today, I took the tree down and packed away the ornaments in 15 minutes while Katie broke down the rest of the items. And even though we add a new ornament or two every so often, it’s never been enough to overwhelm our new container system.

As for the outdoor lights, we have an extension rod Katie found that has a clip and trigger system from Dyno allowing us to place the lights on our gutters without need for a ladder.

It takes a fraction of the time to get done since we leave the clips attached to the light strands even after taking them down. Put ‘em up… five minutes. Take ‘em down… half that.

Oh, I so like how we do it now.