Decorations headed into storage for a season need different packing than decorations going back into the attic for eleven months. The difference is handling.
A move loads them, a truck carries them, a vault holds them, and another crew delivers them, which is four more opportunities for damage than a box carried up a ladder. Pack for the handling rather than for the storage, and almost nothing breaks. If you’d rather not do it yourself, our professional packers can take just the fragile pieces as a partial pack.
Sort Before You Pack Anything
Decorations accumulate in a way that nothing else in a house does, and a move is the only realistic moment to deal with it. Open everything before it goes into a carton. Half of what comes out will be broken, tangled, or something nobody has hung in six years.
Separate into three piles. Things used every year, things kept for sentiment regardless of use, and things that exist because they were never thrown away. The third pile should not take up storage you are paying for.
The second pile is the one that deserves the careful packing, and it is usually much smaller than people expect once they are actually looking at it. Our best practices for seasonal decorations cover the sorting pass in more detail if the collection is large.
Pack Ornaments for a Truck, Not a Shelf
Original manufacturer boxes are built for a shelf, not for a load. The cardboard dividers compress, and a carton that sat fine in an attic for years will not survive a stack in a moving truck. Repack ornaments into compartmented cartons or build dividers from cardboard.
- Wrap each fragile ornament individually in packing paper, not newspaper
- Use compartmented cartons so nothing touches anything else
- Pack heavy ceramic and glass pieces on the bottom layer only
- Fill every void, since an ornament that can shift will
- Mark the carton fragile on all four sides and the top
Weight distribution matters as much as wrapping. Decoration cartons are usually light for their size, which tempts people to stack them high, and a tall stack of light boxes topples more easily than a short stack of heavy ones. Keep decoration cartons to a moderate stack height and put something solid underneath them.
Glass and ceramic are the obvious risks. The quieter one is anything with a painted or glittered finish, which transfers onto whatever it rests against over months in a sealed vault. Paper between layers solves that for almost nothing.
Understand What a Utah Winter Does to Stored Decorations
Temperature is the part people underestimate. A storage space that swings from well above ninety in late summer to below freezing in January is hard on specific materials, and decorations are made almost entirely of those materials.
Candles soften, slump, and fuse to whatever they are packed against, and the damage is permanent. Artificial trees and garlands become brittle in deep cold and shed when unpacked.
Adhesive on anything constructed with glue fails in both directions, letting go in heat and cracking in cold. Our notes on protecting candles from heat damage apply to anything wax-based, and a conditioned space removes most of this category of problem outright.
Storing a decoration collection through a move?
Ask us about vault storage at the quote, and we will tell you which pieces need the conditioned space.
Handle Lights, Garlands, and Trees Separately
Light strings are the single most replaced item after a move, and almost always because of tangling rather than failure. Wind each string around a piece of stiff cardboard, secure the end, and label it with the room or tree it belongs to. Ten minutes now saves an evening in December.
Inflatables and anything with a motor or a blower need their own treatment. Dry them completely before packing, since residual moisture trapped in folded vinyl through a Utah winter produces mildew that does not come out. Fold rather than stuff, and keep the stakes and cords with the unit they belong to.
Artificial trees do best disassembled into their original sections rather than compressed into a bag. A tree bag is convenient, and it also crushes branches for months at a stretch, which is why trees come out of storage looking thinner than they went in.
Wreaths and garlands want a rigid carton rather than a bag for the same reason. Anything with an internal light system should be tested before it is packed, because discovering a dead section after unpacking is worse than replacing it now.
Decide What Goes Into Storage and What Travels With You
The timing question matters more than the packing question if your move lands between October and January. Anything you intend to use this season should never enter storage at all, because retrieving one carton from a sealed vault is not a same-day errand.
Pull the current season’s decorations out first and transport them yourself. Everything else can go into temperature-controlled storage for seasonal belongings with the rest of the household.
Vaults are tagged and inventoried before sealing, so label the decoration cartons clearly enough that the inventory record is useful to you six months later. Anything made of wax, resin, or glued construction belongs in the conditioned space rather than a garage or an unheated unit.
Moving with a season’s worth of decorations?
Call us, and we will plan which cartons travel with you and which go into the vault.
