Organization: Ornaments

As part of my mission to get things pared down and organized around here, I recently tackled the rather large project of re-organizing the Christmas ornaments.

After taking down the five Christmas trees, I sorted the ornaments on the dining room table. The ornaments shown in the photo below are just a fraction of the ornaments I have, so I hauled the remaining ornaments upstairs to sort them, too.

Previously, my ornaments were stored in these cardboard boxes. They're sturdy boxes with three layers, but they're really inconvenient to use: In order to reach ornaments in the bottom of the box, you have to lift out the top layers. The dividers then fall apart and the ornaments spill.

Bailey knew I was frustrated with the boxes, so she bought me several Snapware ornament containers at Target. The advantage of this design is that you can access a single layer of ornaments without disturbing the others. I liked the Snapware boxes so much that I bought lots of them!

As Bailey and I were decorating the trees this year, we decided to organize the ornaments that she will want to take with her next year to her new apartment when she has her own Christmas tree. 

One thing led to another, and then I decided that this was the year to start on an ornament mini-album. Many of our ornaments have a story, and I want Bailey to know why each one is special. (You can read the post I wrote about this for Memory Bound here.)

So as I put the ornaments away, I took photos of many of them. I'll come up with a simple album format which will include a small photo and information about each one. 

Bailey made this one as a child at Living History Farms.

I put her ornaments in a couple of boxes, all organized and labeled for next year.

 I organized the remaining ornaments by theme or type and labeled each box. This will make it much easier to find them each year, as I like to change the decorations around to create "themed" trees.

Overall, I feel good about the progress I've made. The ornaments are now much easier to access and much less likely to break. I'll post pictures of the mini-album once it's complete!