I love the holidays. My mom loved the holidays. And so did her mom. And as such, when my Grandma passed away many years ago, all her decorations went to my mom. And when my mom passed away over a decade ago, both hers and grandma’s decorations came to me. And of course I have my own. So now, one entire section of my garage neatly houses half a dozen bins containing three generations of holiday decorations.

The only problem is that while I live in a lovely home, the amount of decorating space I have is about the size of a studio apartment. I would need about four living-rooms to have enough surface area to display all of the animated holiday characters, ceramic statues and figurines, along with the tree and all its special ornaments. Oh yes, and did I mention we have a train set?

Even with this challenge I still love Christmas and I insist on decorating as much as I can. This has forced me to get a little creative in how I store my holiday decorations, to make it as easy as possible to access everything each year. Or, a subset of decorations some years. It seems every year that the time to put away my holiday decorations comes as fast as it did to put them out.