Post Holiday Bonus: Quick ADHD-Friendly Tips to Make Next Year Easier While Packing Up This Year

Pack Up Christmas Once, Thank Yourself Next Year

If your Christmas stuff is still up right now, this one’s for you — there’s still time for a few quick tips that’ll make your brain genuinely happy next year when you dig everything back out. None of this is “buy matching red bins and purge down to a minimalist capsule.” These are 30-second moves, not projects.

Label the bins you never opened

As you pull bins out of storage to start repacking, if any of them never got opened this year, grab scrap paper (kids’ construction paper works fine) and a marker. Write “did not use in 2025” and tape it to the top. Next December, we won’t remember — everything will look equally important again. But when you see that label next year, you’ll immediately know you’re holding five bins you haven’t opened in who-knows-how-long, and you’ll be ready to donate them the day after Thanksgiving without a second thought, back when donation centers still want holiday items.

Hand the wrapping supplies to your kids

If your kids are old enough to help and you don’t mind them seeing the gift wrap stash, gather it all and let them sort: bags by size, ribbon rolls together, tissue paper by color, tags separated from bows. It keeps them busy while you’re taking down ornaments, and once everything’s sorted, it’s much easier to look at the pile and ask yourself honestly whether you actually need to keep all of it.

Consume the consumables

Christmas paper plates, napkins, and cheap holiday decor items you tell yourself you’ll “save for next year” rarely actually get used again — you’ll just end up back at the store buying more and accumulating remnants of this and that indefinitely. Pick one of two paths: either use them up now (it’s fine to eat off a Christmas plate in January if the goal is depletion, not aesthetics), or box them together and label the box “use in a power outage” so they still get used eventually. Either way, get them gone — the only thing that actually breaks a habit of over-keeping is removing the option to keep doing it.

Turn leftover wrapping paper into next year’s countdown

Here’s a fun one: gather any Christmas-themed books you own, wrap each one individually in your leftover wrapping paper scraps, and number them. Twelve books becomes a 12-night countdown; 24 becomes a bedtime-story advent calendar. Unwrap one a night next December and read it together. It uses up exactly the odd scraps of paper that are too small to save for anything else, and it turns “I have all these useless wrapping paper ends” into an actual tradition.

Build a “gift of the month club” for duplicate gifts

If you always end up with five candles, six lotions, or a drawer of sample perfumes after the holidays, staple together twelve pieces of paper labeled January through December and pick one gift per label. Set a phone reminder for the first of each month to open that month’s item. The goal is to stop the slow accumulation of “special” things that never actually get used because it never feels like the right occasion.

Start a “gifts for others” tote

Collect anything brand new, still tagged, that your kids or family are never going to touch — wrong size, wrong interest, just not a fit. Put them all in one tote labeled “gifts for others,” and store it with the rest of your holiday things. When it resurfaces next December, you’ll have ready-made hostess gifts, toy-drive donations, or coat-drive contributions already sitting there, saving you money and decision-making at the exact time of year you have the least of both. If you’re worried about re-gifting awkwardness, jot down who originally gave you each item while it’s still fresh in your memory.

Leave yourself a note before you forget

Before this season fades from memory, write a quick note or record a voice memo: what you loved, what flopped, what you wish you’d done differently, whether a tradition your kids have outgrown is worth continuing. You will not remember any of this in twelve months. Label it something like “listen before decorating next year” so future-you actually finds it at the right moment.

Your practical, actionable step

Pick even one of these — the bin labels take 30 seconds and pay off the most. Do it now, while everything’s already out and in your hands.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.