Best Christmas Decorating Hacks to Make Life Easier

As all of the songs say, the Christmas season is full of love, joy, peace and prosperity. However, what all of the songs tend to leave out is just how busy and stressful the entire season can be!

Many of us spend the week before Christmas running around like crazy people, doing our last minute shopping, cooking, wrapping presents, or making sure the house is in top shape for our visiting family. To top it all off, the kids are home from school the entire time, making things even more difficult.

It’s a wild time of year, to put it lightly. Fortunately, we’ve come to the rescue!

Here are a few clever Christmas hacks to make your season of cooking, cleaning and bringing your family joy just a little bit easier.

Fuller Tree

Everyone wants the fullest tree they can find at the farm, but things don’t always work out that way. Whether someone got to the perfect tree first, or there just weren’t many to choose from, it’s easy to end up with a tree that wish was just a little more filled out.

Fortunately, there’s a hack that can make any tree the envy of the season.

Before you start putting up lights and ornaments, get some shiny, dark green tinsel and wrap it around the lighter areas of the tree. Once the lights and ornaments are added to the equation, you won’t be able to notice the tinsel, but your tree will look much better than it did before.

Ornament Storage

Ornaments are kind of like headphones, in that they somehow always get tangled up when you’re not using them.

Most stores sell ornament storage containers, but they often cost much more than you want to pay. Fortunately, there are a few objects you already have, or can buy for cheap, that will do the trick instead.

Egg crates, tackle boxes, and red solo cups all make for great ornament storage options. 

Bonus hack: You can also wrap your Christmas lights around clothing hangers to keep them organized in storage.

Wrapping Paper Disposal

Wrapping paper flies all around the living room on Christmas morning, and no one wants to keep a trash bag sitting out in the open to throw it all in. 

Fortunately, there’s a much more attractive-looking way to get rid of the paper your kids are tossing into the wind.

Take any large cardboard box you’ve got sitting around and wrap it in the festive paper of your choosing. Just like that, there’s a place to throw away the used paper lying on the floor, but it looks just like another present is sitting in the room.

Easy Wreath Hanging

Wreaths are a fun decoration to hang up on every door in your house or office, even if it is inconvenient. 

Fortunately, there is an easier way to get these festive rings up wherever you want, without putting some kind of bulky hook up on your doors.

What you do is take a Command hook, turn it upside down, and stick it to the backside of the door, right at the top. Tie a ribbon or string to the wreath, run it over the top of the door, then attach it to the hook on the other side, allowing the wreath’s gravity to do all the work.

Christmas Cookie Gift Boxes

If you’re giving someone cookies this Christmas, and you don’t feel like buying some kind of fancy tin to put them in, look no further than your own pantry.

Hang on to those long, slender boxes that aluminum foil and Saran wrap come in. Cookies line up perfectly inside these containers, all you need to do is put some wax paper on the inside with the cookies, and cover the outside in some festive gift wrap.

Just like that, you’ve got an easy gift for a teacher, co-worker, or anyone who just loves cookies.

Candy Cane Place Card Holders

If you’ve got a big family coming for dinner, and you want everything to look nice and fancy, it’s really easy to create Christmas-themed place card holders for everyone at the table.

Take two small candy canes, flip them upside down and glue them together. This will give you the perfect place to put a name card at each seat, and it won’t cost you more than a couple of dollars.

When dinner is over, everyone will already have a mint that’s ready to eat!

Christmas Flavored Everything

Want to make your favorite treats taste like the Christmas season? Candy canes are the key.

Rather than paying for peppermint to flavor everything, go to the dollar store and buy a couple boxes of candy canes. Go home, toss those canes in a Ziploc bag and crush them up into a fine powder.

Once you’ve got a nice peppermint dust, you can turn everything from hot cocoa to brownies into festive snacks.

Make Cookie Decorating Easier

Whether you’re making a lot of cookies at once, or you’re teaching young kids how to do the decorating, there’s a way to make things a lot easier.

First of all, make sure your icing is a little thinner than usual. Now, take all of your different icings and put them in condiment containers. 

This will prove a lot less difficult than the traditional bags.

Treats for Santa’s Elves

Milk and cookies have always been left out for Santa on Christmas Eve, but the kindness of children has often extended to many of Mr. Claus’ helpers. It started with leaving carrots for the reindeer and now it’s been extended to the elves that actually make the toys being left under the tree.

If your kids are wanting to leave a treat for Santa’s elves, there’s an adorable way to do that while also keeping the children occupied for a little bit.

All you need is a box of Cheerios, icing, sugar and sprinkles. The kids can decorate the Cheerios to look like donuts, a perfect treat for the tiny toy minions of the North Pole.

Wine Crate Paper Storage

Trying to fit all of your wrapping paper in your closet without bending or busting the tubes?

Go to your local liquor store and grab an old wine box or two. Each box is filled with dividers meant to keep the wine bottles separate during transportation, making them perfect for organizing your tubes of paper.

Simply sit the wine box on the ground and place each tube in a separate part of the box.