If you struggle with decluttering after Christmas each year, then this information is for you! Follow these 5 easy steps in January to get your life back in order for the year. Download a free checklist to help you follow the steps at home.

Christmas can be a challenging time to keep things simple but it’s not impossible. With the right strategies and effort, the holiday season can be something calm and rejuvenating. 

But what about the days after Christmas? 

Decluttering after Christmas can feel like an overwhelming task.

With all of the extra food, gifts and decorations, it can be hard to know where to start when you finally sit down to get your house and your life back in order. 

I’ve struggled with this a lot myself.

Even though I would consider my Christmas season to be decidedly simple, I still struggle to declutter and reorganize when the holiday is over.

The season brings with it the need to do something with old belongings and new products. It is usually accompanied by a couple of extra tasks that go beyond my regular cleaning routine. 

Today I want to share with you a holiday checklist that you can use to help you declutter after Christmas so that you can start the year in order. Don’t forget to download your free checklist to help you get started! 

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Decluttering After Christmas: 5 Areas to Organize

1. Declutter your holiday decorations

As you go about clearing your space of holiday decor, it is a natural time to take stock of what you have and what you might want to get rid of. 

If this idea makes you feel a little overwhelmed, I’ve got a step-by-step guide to help you work through some of it. 

Step 1- Get all of your decorations in one place

Instead of cleaning room by room, I would recommend grabbing all of your decorations from each room and putting them in one space so you can see everything at once.

It is easier to decide what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of when you can see everything together. 

Step 2- Immediately get rid of anything that stayed in storage this year

Were there any decorations that you didn’t even take out of the box this year?

If you have some Christmas decor that didn’t make the cut for you this year, don’t expect that you will feel differently next year.

Get rid of the stuff that you didn’t use. 

Step 3- Ask yourself some important questions to decide if anything else should be tossed

Before putting your stuff away for the year, take a look at all of the decorations and ask yourself some important questions that will help you decide whether those items should be gotten rid of or stored for next year. 

Here are some of the questions you can ask yourself: 

• Is there anything that is broken or in poor condition? If you’ve got some items that have seen better days, it’s time to throw them out.
• Is there anything that took forever to put up? If time is a factor for you and you had some decor that felt overly time-consuming this year, consider donating those items. 
• Is there anything that annoyed me while it was out? As strange as this sounds, there may have been an item or two that felt cumbersome this year. If you ever found yourself annoyed by a piece of decor, it’s time to donate it. 
• Is there anything that I could easily buy or collect next year instead of storing? Some items are so inexpensive that it might actually make more sense to just buy again next year. This might include things like wrapping paper, pine cones, or holiday napkins. Consider donating these items instead of storing them for an entire year. 

Step 4- Store, donate or toss your decor

Now that you have a better idea of what you want to keep and what should move on to another family, it’s time to take the final step.

Put donation items in a bin to take with you to your local donation box. Pack away any items you plan to use next year. Throw out anything else that no longer serves a purpose. 

A note about wrapping paper

I know there are a lot of products out there that are built for storing gift wrapping products.

If you are someone who takes great joy in extravagant wrapping at Christmas and likes to collect many different types of wrapping papers, accessories and tags, then you should absolutely store that stuff for next year.

If, however, you are someone who doesn’t get joy from wrapping presents each year, then there is a simpler approach that won’t require any storage of wrapping paper when the season is over. 

At the beginning of the holiday season, start collecting newspapers and maybe buy one nice wrapping paper at the dollar store.

Wrap all of your gifts with only these two things and then recycle any of the leftovers at the end of the season. 

You can also choose to wrap everything in brown parcel paper and keep that paper out throughout the year for birthdays and other holidays, as well.

Related Post: 17 Tips On How To Simplify Gift-Giving This Christmas

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Brown paper can be easily decorated to be useful throughout the year which is great for people who don’t enjoy making use of the many varieties of wrapping options out there. 

2. Declutter your emails and physical mail

I don’t know about you, but I find that my email inbox gets really cluttered over the course of the holidays due to Christmas promotions and receipts from my online shopping. There are just too many emails to keep organized and not enough time to sit down and look through them all. 

On top of that, you might also be receiving some extra Christmas cards from friends and family. 

What do you do with it all? 

As a general rule of thumb, I like to leave most of my online shopping receipts alone until after everyone has received their gifts.

This way, I am able to make returns easily if it’s necessary. 

Once everyone has received the gifts you bought online, you can go through your emails and easily delete anything that is no longer relevant. 

Here are some emails that you can declutter after Christmas: 

• Promotional emails about holiday sales
• Purchase confirmation emails 
• Delivery confirmation emails
• Holiday messages from friends, family, and businesses
• Invitations to holiday events

The only emails you might want to consider keeping are the actual receipts from your purchases. You can put them in a “Receipt” folder on your email account for ease of access. 

As far as Christmas cards go, it’s your call if you want to keep them or toss them. But if you have no intention of looking at them again in the future, don’t feel guilty about getting rid of them. 

3. Declutter your closet

Choosing to declutter your closet can be a huge undertaking. I’m not necessarily saying that this is the perfect time to go through your entire closet and turn it into a huge downsizing event. 

If you’re up for it, then definitely do a full declutter. But if you’re more like me after the holidays and you’re just looking to make sure that you don’t accumulate too many unnecessary items, then a smaller decluttering session might be all you need. 

As you put away any new clothes you received or bought over the holidays, take a look at what you have in your closet and decide if there’s anything that you no longer want. 

Here are some possible items that you could get rid of: 

• Clothing that has stains or rips
• Clothing that looks old
• Items that have been replaced by a new item you received (like a newer white shirt that replaces your old white shirt) 
• Pieces you haven’t worn all year
• Clothes that don’t match anything else you own

It’s a popular policy for people who are looking to simplify to also follow the “One In, Two Out” principle.

In a wardrobe context, this simply means that for every item you bring into your wardrobe, you get rid of two old things. 

If this feels like too much decluttering for you, try just making a trade. For every item you put in, an old item needs to go. 

Once you’ve determined what you no longer want in your closet, you only need to decide if you want to give the old clothing to someone you know, sell the clothes, donate them, or just throw them out. Use your best judgement. 

Related Post: How to Make Your Own Customized Monthly To-Do List

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4. Declutter any other gifts you received

Besides gifts of clothing, you may have also welcomed a few other new items into your home over the Christmas break. 

Some gifts are easy to organize immediately but others require a little bit of extra work. 

For example, a new book can easily be added to your bookshelf but a new laptop is going to require you to decide what you want to do with your old device. 

Here are a few different things that you might want to do to declutter those items after Christmas: 

Donate, sell, repurpose or toss old items that are now redundant

Some of the items you received or bought over the holidays might render another belonging in your home kind of useless.

Maybe it was an appliance that is an upgrade to an older appliance or perhaps it was a product that serves the purpose of multiple items in your home. 

Whatever it is, you will now need to figure out what to do with the older items. 

If you feel that an item you have is no longer valuable in your home but would be great for someone else, you can donate it or sell it. 

An item that is no longer necessary but could be used in a different way might be repurposed. 

And if the older item is not in good enough condition for any of these other options, then it might be time to throw it out. 

If you don’t want a particular gift, get rid of it

What if the thing you want to donate, sell, repurpose or toss is the gift you just got? 

Don’t feel like you have to use a gift that you received if you didn’t like it.

The gift already served its purpose as something that provides a way for someone else to show you their love. Whether or not you end up using the gift is irrelevant. 

Once you’ve received the gift, you don’t need to feel bad if you would rather just get rid of it afterwards.

If you were given a gift receipt, then you can return the item for something you would like more. 

If you didn’t receive a gift receipt, then treat the item like any other. You can either donate, sell, repurpose or regift it. Because it is a new item, it is unlikely that you would toss it. 

Decide what to do with gift receipts as soon as possible

If you can, try to give yourself a short time frame to get your gift receipts dealt with.

Set a date for some time in January for you to go return any items you don’t want and buy something with the money from the gift receipt on the same visit. 

If you wait to use your gift receipt, you may forget about it or end up stressed by an extra task that is sitting on your to-do list. 

If you like the gift you received, then toss any gift receipts right away. Commit to owning what you were given and let everything else go. 

Prepare any gifts that need to be returned or exchanged

In the same way that you might need to return some items that were bought for you, there might be a few items that you bought for someone else that needs to be returned or exchanged, as well.

Just like the gift receipts, don’t wait too long to get this task completed.

The longer you wait, the more stressful this process becomes for everyone. 

Have a designated place for gift cards

If you are someone who receives a lot of gift cards over the holiday season, it will be important for you to have a place for you to keep them organized. 

You don’t want to end up with a bunch of lost gift cards by the end of the year. 

Put all of those cards in one place and make deliberate plans to use them! 

Related Post: 15 Monthly Tasks to Add to Your Routine

5. Declutter the holiday food you’ve accumulated

Even if you’re not the one hosting a big turkey dinner for the holidays, you likely collected quite a bit of extra foods, snacks, and desserts. 

I always end up with A TON of candy and chocolate, plus extra snacks and turkey leftovers from dinners I attended. 

Though I suppose eating it all at once is an option, I’m not sure it’s an option I would recommend. 

Here are a few steps you can take to get your food store back in order without wasting too much food: 

Step 1: Clean out any rotting food

If there is anything in your fridge or pantry that is clearly no longer edible, this is an easy first step to take.

Get rid of anything that you can no longer eat so that you are not storing up any gross, mouldy foods in the future.

Step 2: Throw out or give away anything you don’t want

This step is going to be a little difficult because you’re going to have to get real with yourself and admit that you’re not really going to eat all of the food in front of you. 

Ask yourself a few questions to decide if the food is something that you want to keep in your kitchen or not: 

• Is this a food item that I want to eat? If the food is not one that you enjoy, you can go ahead and get rid of it right now. 
• Will I be able to eat all of this before it goes bad? If you have too much of one particular food item and can’t eat all of it before it goes bad, you could consider keeping some of it and giving the rest away or even packing some of it away in your freezer.
• Is any of this food going to make me lose sight of my health goals? I don’t have anything against junk food but if you know that it’s just going to be a source of temptation then you might want to consider getting it out of your house

Step 3: Ration your treats

If you received a lot of candy, snacks, and treats, you don’t necessarily have to toss them all while decluttering after Christmas. But you probably shouldn’t try to eat them all at once, either. 

Try rationing your treats, instead! 

With whatever system of organization you have in your home, take some time to organize your treats so that you have limited access to them.

Save some of your treats for later months (as long as they’re not treats that go bad). This way you can enjoy your goodies for a longer period of time and maintain a healthier diet.

Step 4: Forego grocery shopping for a week or two 

If you can manage it, this trick is a great one that makes sure that you don’t go ignoring the things in your fridge and pantry before stocking up on new food. 

I do this every time I feel like I’ve been leaving a lot of the items in my fridge untouched for too long. 

If you have to go to the grocery store, try to stick to the basic foods you need, like eggs, milk, and butter. Leave everything else on your list for another time. 

Take stock of what you have at home and get creative with your meals for the week.

Challenge yourself to use what you already have in your kitchen to create yummy meals. Repurpose your leftovers and pay attention to the ingredients you’ve been ignoring. 

Once you feel like your fridge and pantry are back to a more reasonable size, then you can go back to your regular grocery runs. 

Extra tips on decluttering after Christmas

Make use of those shipping boxes

With all of the online shopping that happens in December, you probably have a bunch of cumbersome boxes lying around your house. 

Before you toss them in the recycling, though, decide if you want to make use of them for other things, instead. 

Here are some ways you can use those big shipping boxes when decluttering: 

• Turn empty boxes into storage boxes for Christmas decorations
• Keep a couple of boxes for donation bins 
• Use the empty boxes as temporary recycling bins to collect other garbage
• Use the smaller shipping boxes as organizers around your home instead of buying them

Everything needs to have a home

When you add new items to your household, it is going to be crucial that you find a proper home for each and every item. 

If you can’t find a permanent place to put something, it will just end up floating around your house and creating a mess, so it’s very important that you find a space for it. 

Additionally, if it turns out that you are out of space and there is no possible way to find a home for the item, then you need to consider getting rid of something.

Items without a home just end up adding stress to your life that you don’t need. 

Overwhelmed? You don’t need to do it all in one day

Honestly, I have never been able to get all of my decluttering tasks done in one day. I always end up losing steam and reaching a point where I just can’t do any more decluttering. 

But that’s totally okay! 

If you need to take more time to work on reorganizing and decluttering after Christmas, then do it! You don’t need to feel bad about it. 

Personally, I like to designate the entirety of January to get my life back in order.

Instead of trying to have everything in my life organized by January 1, I take the entire month to clean, declutter, reassess, and set goals.

I save all of the typically productive New Year’s traditions for Chinese New Year, which starts on February 1. 

So take your time and use little moments in your day to get things in order piece by piece. 

Frequently asked questions about decluttering after the holidays

What should you not do when decluttering? 

There really isn’t a wrong way to declutter your home but there are some good things to keep in mind that might help you have an easier time. 

Don’t declutter with a lot of other people

It’s typically easier to declutter when you only have to think about yourself. If you have someone else with you, they might try to make you feel guilty about getting rid of something that you don’t want. 

To ensure that you are making clear decisions, it is usually best to declutter in a judgement-free space. 

Don’t declutter when you are feeling unwell mentally

Decluttering and downsizing can require a lot of mental strength, so it is important that you tackle these things when you are feeling good. Otherwise, you might end up making decisions that you regret later. 

Don’t declutter while multitasking

This task may seem trivially easy but it’s best to put all of your energy and focus on it when you finally decide to do it.

You don’t want to accidentally end up throwing something out that you meant to keep or put something in a place you won’t remember later. 

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When decluttering where do I start? 

The best place to start when decluttering or downsizing is simply by collecting all of the items you need to go through and putting them in one place. 

It is easiest to determine what you want when you can see everything all at once. 

It also helps to get all of the obvious garbage out the way right away so that you are not distracted by the mess. 

How do you declutter when you want to keep everything? 

It is not always necessary to get rid of things when you declutter after Christmas.

Sometimes decluttering simply means that you have to find new homes for things and do some rearranging and reorganizing. 

For example, if you received a bunch of kitchen gadgets that year because you just moved into a new home and you don’t have any kitchen items, there’s no need to get rid of all of your utensils to make up for the new stuff. 

However, if you are in the process of finding homes for everything and the house is starting to feel crowded because you’re out of space, you will need to be harder on yourself. 

You don’t need more space; you need less stuff. 

For the items that you couldn’t make a home for, you will either have to get rid of the item or make a trade with another item.

Don’t try to fill up every drawer to the brim or stuff one too many items into the closet.

Make a conscious choice to keep your space comfortable and recognize that this means being a little choosy about what you own.

Decide what needs to go in order for your home to still feel spacious and comfortable. 

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I hope that some of these suggestions were able to help you get your space back in order after the bustling holiday season. Don’t forget to download the checklist to help you keep track of your progress!

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