Want to make your home festive this holiday season but avoid the headaches? Check out these stress-free holiday décor tips for your apartment.
There’s nothing better than opening your door on a chilly winter night to a cozy apartment decorated with festive holiday décor. Just the sight of a tree, a wreath, and lights can instantly put you in the holiday spirit!
Decorating is fun, but it can also be stressful. And un-decorating when the holidays are over … well, that’s a dreaded chore that no one likes to do.
Want to make your home festive this holiday season but avoid any possible headaches? Check out these stress-free holiday décor tips for your apartment.
Scale It Back
If you want holiday decorating to be as stress-free as possible, embrace the concept of less is more.
There’s no need to decorate your entire place. You can make your apartment look perfectly festive with just a few focal elements, such as a tree, a wreath, and a few other items.
Dreading the tear-down of the decorations after New Year’s Day? Put a limit on what you choose to display.
For example, a pre-lit tabletop tree with a dozen ornaments is just as effective as a six-foot tree covered with hundreds of tiny balls and lights.
Want the option to leave your decorations up a little bit longer than usual?
Stick to neutral colors, like silver and gold, rather than traditional holiday colors like red and green. Metallics are neutrals. They’ll look chic through New Year’s and you can put off your un-decorating until mid-January.
You know that storage box of holiday dish towels, doormats, and throw pillows? Forget about it! Skip the little accessories and stick to the elements that make the most impact.
Decorate With Large Items Rather Than Small Items
When it’s time to decorate, remember this:
The more you put out, the more you’ll have to put away when the holiday is over.
So instead of decorating with lots of little tchotchkes, put a few larger items on display.
Put up a full-sized tree with oversized ornaments (so there are fewer ornaments to hang). Put a huge wreath over your mantle and leave all those little snowmen statues and nutcrackers in storage. Hang strands of string lights on one wall rather than placing holiday-scented candles all around your home.
Having a few large items on display makes a much bigger (and much more stylish) impact than having dozens of small items scattered about.
Decorate Little by Little
There’s no need to decorate your entire apartment in one day.
It’s easy to want to bang out the entire project on the first Saturday in December. But if you create a plan (and a timeline), you can do it little by little over the course of a few weeks.
You can take the stress out of holiday decorating simply by putting up one or two decorations each day.
On day one, hang a wreath on your door. On day two, decorate your mantle or hang your stockings. On day three, put up your tree.
Break the big chore of decorating down into lots of smaller tasks and they’ll be a lot more fun to do!
Use Presents as Décor
Planning on spending hours wrapping gifts? Wrap them early and those gift-wrapped goodies can do double duty as holiday décor.
A tower of presents stacked high in your living room looks super festive, especially when they’re wrapped in pretty, metallic paper. And there’s another bonus to using presents as decoration:
At some point, you’re going to give all of those gifts away. And every time you do, that’s one less thing you’ll need to put away in storage when the season is over.
Sure, it’s traditional to put presents under the tree, but that’s not the only option. You can also stack them in corners, pile them high on tables, or even put them on your mantle (if the boxes are small enough).
This year, as you wrap your gifts, get creative! The better your gift boxes look, the more decorative they’ll be!
Make It Fun!
Decorating should be enjoyable; it shouldn’t feel like a chore. So gather your loved ones and make it a fun, festive experience.
Put on some holiday music while you trim the tree and hang the stockings. Have a glass of wine or nibble on some holiday cookies while you string up your lights.
If you want this holiday season to be stress-free, you’ll need to remember this:
Decorating is optional.
Sure, everyone loves how it looks when the job is done, but if the burden of decorating falls solely on you, it’s time to rethink your approach. This year, be honest and let your family know that you’re scaling back the entire process unless they pitch in to help.
There’s no reason to let decorating impose unnecessary stress upon your life. Ultimately, it should be something you want to do, not something that you feel like you need to do.
So get your people involved and turn a day of decorating into a mini holiday party. The more people that get in on the fun, the better!
Conclusion
The holiday season is stressful for many people.
There’s shopping. There’s the cleaning. There’s planning of holiday meals and parties.
Then, there’s attending other people’s parties and finding the perfect outfit to wear to every event.
It can become too much to handle, so don’t let it get out of hand!
Scale back your overall decorating plan. Decorate with a few large items, such as a tree and a wreath, rather than lots of small items. Put up your holiday décor step by step, a few items at a time.
Wrap presents as soon as you buy them and use them in place of other décor. And, most importantly, make decorating fun.
If you gather your friends and family together, you can turn decorating day into a party that just might become one of your favorite events of the season!
About the Author
Aaron Hunt is the property manager for Prime Place KSU.