Christmas Clean Up Tips

It’s the day after Christmas and chances are you’re digging out. Here are a few ideas to help streamline the process and hopefully, make for easier set up for next year.

The Lights

Remember the scene in Christmas Vacation when Clark pulls the lights out of the box and they’re all a tangled mess? How does that happen when you swore you neatly wrapped them up? Suddenly your neatly wrapped Christmas lights are a wadded up in a ball and there’s no way you’re going to get them untangled. There are a few ways to prevent this. First, an extension cord keeper can reel them up nice and keep them in one place so they can fit into a box with other decorations. Another idea is to wrap them around empty paper towel tubes and a hose reel is also another clever way to store them.

The Tree

Has your tree left a sticky mess behind? Goo Gone is perfect for cleaning up tree sap. If you don’t have Goo Gone on hand, rubbing alcohol and even vodka can be used to pull it up and if you use vodka to clean up your floor, you can just pour yourself a cocktail when you’re finished.

The Ornaments

Many ornaments are fragile little things that are either made of glass or they’re fragile due to age. They’re super easy to protect in an egg carton. Smaller ornaments fit easily into the nooks. For bigger ornaments, for those of us who have a shredder, shred all that used gift wrap and it makes a nice nest for breakables. Just remember that if you have ornaments make of gingerbread, popcorn or cranberries, they can be bait for mice and such, so it's better to just throw them out.

The Flatware

If you dragged out your "good" flatware for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner and had to polish it, stood there cursing and figured there had to be a better way, there is! I worked for a place that made and distributed anti tarnish strips. All you have to do is place these strips in with your silver and it absorbs the enzymes and pollutants in the air that can tarnish your silver.