Some people put a pumpkin on the doorstep, hand out candy, and call it Halloween. Other people transform their homes with cobwebs, skeletons, witches, fog machines, and decorations designed to scare anyone who comes near the front door.
I fall closer to the first group. But my daughter loves Halloween and has been known to plan her costumes years in advance.
However you celebrate, there is no right amount of Halloween. If you love it and want to go all out, go all out. The key to Halloween organization isn’t having less. It’s taking care of what you have and having a plan for what happens to all of it when Halloween is over.
Start With a Plan
Halloween arrives at the beginning of a fast and furious stretch of holidays. Before you know it, you’re thinking about Thanksgiving and everything that follows.
Before Halloween, take a little time to sort through your decorations and decide what you actually want to use. Plan when you’ll buy candy rather than leaving it until the last minute. And, just as importantly, decide when you’re going to take everything down.
Like any organizing project, a little planning makes the whole thing feel much less overwhelming.
Sort Before You Store
When Halloween is over, don’t just take everything down and dump it into a bin labeled “Halloween.”
Start by sorting.
Some decorations simply aren’t meant to be saved. Pumpkins, gourds, foliage, and other natural decorations need to be disposed of or composted as appropriate. That fake cobweb material you’ve stretched across the house may have reached the end of its useful life too.
Then look at everything else and ask yourself: Do I want to use this again next year?
If the answer is yes, take the time to pack it properly.
The best Halloween storage ideas are usually the simplest. Group like with like. Spiders can go together. Candy bags can go together. Costumes can go together. Fragile decorations should be wrapped and protected before they’re stored.
Then label your bins clearly. Instead of having five containers that all say “Halloween,” make it easy to know what’s actually inside each one: “Halloween Costumes,” “Halloween Pumpkins,” “Halloween Decorations” or, if you want to have a little more fun with it, “Halloween: Things That Will Scare People.”
When you organize Halloween decorations this way, next October you won’t have to open every bin to find what you’re looking for.
And if your Halloween decorating includes one of those enormous skeletons, you may have a bigger storage challenge. In a New York City apartment, that might mean off-site storage. If you have a garage, you may have more options. Either way, where something will live for the other eleven months of the year is worth considering.
What Should You Do With Old Costumes?
Costume organization starts with deciding what happens to a costume once Halloween is over.
If you rented it, return it. If it’s something you’ll wear again, clean it before you put it away. If it can be hung, find an appropriate place in a closet where it can safely wait for next year.
But not everything has to become a permanent part of your Halloween collection.
My daughter often buys clothing specifically for a costume, although she’ll use something she already owns if it works for the character. If the clothing is something she can wear in everyday life afterward, it simply becomes part of her wardrobe.
She once had an elaborate period dress that she knew she wasn’t going to wear again. A cousin loved it and asked for it, so she passed it along. Costumes may also be useful to a local theater group or a school drama department.
There can also be sentimental reasons to keep a costume. I still remember a genie costume my mother made for me when I was young, and I’m a little sad that I don’t know what happened to it.
So before storing a costume, ask yourself: Do I want to wear this again? Do I have the space for it? Does it have sentimental value? Or is there someone else who would really enjoy it?
And Then There’s the Candy
For many children, amassing an enormous pile of candy is one of the primary goals of Halloween.
But they probably don’t like everything they collected.
Instead of finding a container large enough for the entire haul, help children sort through it. Let them identify the candy they actually like and want to eat. Put those pieces in a bowl or designated container.
After some time has passed, take another look. If certain candy has been sitting there untouched for a couple of months, it’s probably time for it to go.
This is organizing too. You don’t have to find storage for things nobody actually wants.
Take Care of the Things You Love
I don’t believe there is a “reasonable” amount of holiday decor that everyone should own.
We have a client who absolutely loves Christmas. We helped her decorate last year, and Christmas was everywhere. It made her incredibly happy.
Halloween is no different.
If Halloween is your holiday and you love having bins and bins of decorations, great. If Christmas is your thing, great. If you love decorating for Hanukkah, great. Organizing isn’t about someone else telling you how much you should own.
But if you’ve decided something is important enough to keep, care for it like something you love. Sort it. Pack it properly. Label it. Give it an appropriate place to live.
Then, when Halloween comes around again, you can open those bins and enjoy what you’ve saved instead of dealing with a jumble of things you tossed into a container eleven months earlier.
Most importantly, enjoy Halloween in whatever way you want to enjoy it. And if you love scaring people, have a great time.
Need a Hand With Halloween?
If you want help getting your home ready for Halloween, reach out to us now. The Organize Me team can help you set up and create the haunted home you’ve been imagining.
And when Halloween is over, we can help you take it all down, organize and store what you want to keep, and reset your home for the next holiday that’s coming right on its heels.
Schedule an introductory call with Organize Me to talk about how we can help.
