Open This Before You Take Down Your Holiday Decorations

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By Meg Lappe

Senior Editorial Commerce Director

Whether you're someone who takes their tree down as soon as it's December 26, New Year's Eve, or sometime in late January, sometime soon you'll need a place to store your ornaments, bows, tinsel, and tree toppers. Luckily, we just finished testing 16 storage bins we bought from Amazon, Balsam Hill, Wayfair, and more. Our takeaways? You'll likely want three main organizers:

Ornament Organizer: While this Sattiyrch box looked flimsy, packed full of ornaments, it felt secure and fit a surprising number of ornaments, given it's compact size. After testing, we still would recommend you wrap anything precious (especially family heirlooms), but the cardboard dividers fit oddly shaped items just fine. The zipper closure ensures you don't have to deal with dust or creatures when you put your ornaments away for at least 9 months of the year. Plus, at just about $10 per box, you could store a tree's worth of ornaments for under $50.

String Light Storage: There's nothing worse than pulling out your Christmas lights on Black Friday and having to spend hours untangling them before you begin to decorate. To prevent it, you'll have to start rolling them properly as you put them away. This box from Amazon has four big plastic 'Xs' that you can use to roll your lights around—and keep them detangled and unbroken. For less than $25, you can store 800 lights, or about 8 strands of lights. That's enough to cover at least an 8-foot tree—and there was still more room in the box to squeeze in other lights for the outdoors.

The Be-All-End-All Storage for Gift Wrap: Another top pick from Zober, this wrapping paper storage doesn't have the same pitfalls that other wrapping organizers have. Instead of one big compartment where things get messy, it's got five sections to ensure nothing is bent or damaged. Plus, it's got a separate compartment for scissors, ribbons, and bags. All those features make it more impactful for your holiday storage than many more pricier options. To quote our holiday shopping editor, "it's a complete steal."