5 Frugal Christmas Decorating Tips

by Myra on December 6, 2011

The following post is from Myra of My Blessed Life:

source: indecorating.com

With Thanksgiving over, you have probably already decorated for Christmas or you are working on it now. From pulling boxes, bins and bags out of the attic, to shopping for new ornaments and ribbon and browsing Pinterest for the latest and greatest inspiration, decorating for Christmas is hectic to say the least.

There has to be a better way - a way out of the holiday decorating rat race. Whether you are an early-decorator or a late-decorator, these 5 frugal Christmas decorating tips can ease the stress on your heart and your budget.

Cut Fresh Greenery

If allergies aren’t an issue in your home, consider using fresh greenery {evergreen, magnolia, boxwood} to decorate with. If you can cut greenery from a tree or bush for free that is the best, but oftentimes Christmas tree shops either sell or give away cuttings.  One of my favorite features of fresh cut greenery is the wonderful, festive, evergreen scent.

Shop Thrift Stores

Vintage Christmas items such as ornaments, tins, wreaths, pot holders and place mats can be found at your local thrift shop for next to nothing.  The character and charm of second hand ornaments adds a unique touch to Christmas decor. So, don’t be afraid to mix up your decor to include pieces of yesteryear.

Use What You Have

This probably goes without saying, but when being on a strict budget or a “no-spend policy” for Christmas decor, just use what you have. Simple, beautiful decor is sometimes more pleasing than overdone, fluffy decorations. Don’t try to make your home look like a magazine cover. Just decorate simply and let your heart {and budget} shine!

Create Your Own Decorations

There are so many possibilities when using natural items from your back yard or various other craft supplies – felt, burlap, ribbons, buttons.  Think outside the box, involve your children, and create unique Christmas items that you will treasure for decades!

Have you downloaded your free Handmade Decor ebook yet?

Host a Christmas Decor Swap

Invite a few friends over and have everyone bring the Christmas decorations that they are tired of.  With a Christmas Decor Swap, everyone will go home inspired and excited about their “new” decor…and it didn’t cost a dime!  How fun!

I hope these 5 frugal Christmas decorating tips have inspired you to save your money and make your Christmas decor uniquely memorable for your family this holiday season!

How do you save money on your Christmas decorations?

Myra has a B.A. in Interior Design and is currently self-employed. When she’s not spending time with her little man, thrifting, creating, shopping or working on a project, Myra enjoys date nights with her husband and blogging at My Blessed Life.

  • http://www.quirkybookworm.com Jessica @ Quirky Bookworm

    I really like the idea of a decor swap! I had a couple of items I was going to get rid of, but maybe I’ll save them and try and have a swap sometime the week after Christmas before everyone packs away their stuff for next year.

    • http://lifeyourway.net Mandi @ Life Your Way

      That’s a great idea — after Christmas is the perfect time to do one!

  • Dkd1434

    Cutting fresh greens from our yard is my fav way to save money at Christmas. I shop at thrift stores and use what I have too.

    • http://lifeyourway.net Mandi @ Life Your Way

      Ooh, I love that! I wish I had pine trees in my yard!

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  • http://indecentorder.blogspot.com/ Tbremer33

    great post.  i have used some of these same ideas, like using fresh cut greenery.  why had this never come to my attention before this year?!  

    http://indecentorder.blogspot.com/2011/12/house-tour-christmas-2011.html 

  • Cheryl

    Absolutely! It exhausts me to decide which type of food to buy, how I should prepare it, what I should do with the containers, and to constantly remind my husband that we are trying to make changes and stick with them.

    I know what you mean about a temporarily-liberating bad decision. I had to go to Wal-mart yesterday for some odds and ends and to use up a gift card, and I had to buy produce for a salad-and-fruit lunch today with the Sunday school class. I made sure and washed them super good, but the lower grocery bill was kinda nice. Of course, I still worried about the pesticides that wouldn’t wash off :O

  • Becca

    Most of your “cheats” are people’s “normal” so I wouldn’t worry about it! :-)

    We are still phasing into this more green, natural lifestyle.  I was always raised to be thrifty, and for that reason, we often made healthy, green choices.  But in other ways, I am definitely still learning!

    1. I often just throw out papers rather than recycling.  My 19 month old is always scribbling, and though we reuse scrap paper, I just grow weary of making the trip out to the garage to the recycling bin for every scrap of paper.

    2. I still use some plastic containers, though we are trying to phase to glass.

    3.  I still use the dryer occasionally.  Have to, actually, with all the rain the NE is having!

    4. I still buy a few things, like dish soap, bar soap and stuff that isn’t strictly “natural”.  

    5. I occasionally bleach my diapers with good old Clorox. I don’t like doing it, but they sometimes begin to stink and it’s the only thing that works…

    6. I use the car pretty frequently (though I try to condense trips).  We’re too far from anywhere to walk instead of drive.  

    There are other things too, I am sure.  However, we do recycle,compost in a compost pile and feed our ducks and chicks with the household scraps.  No food is ever wasted.  I do use the clothesline nearly all the time, as much as I can.  I make a lot of my own cleaners and soaps, I cook from scratch, we garden, etc.  So I feel pretty good about our attempts!

    • http://twitter.com/kitchenstew Katie Kimball

       Becca,
      Sounds like you’re doing awesome! For the paper recycling, if you can put a basket in the rooms where the paper is often used – mine is right where I sort the mail – you’ll be more likely to toss paper in there, you know? It really works! :) Katie

  • Becca

    By the way, did you by chance sneak into my house this morning and take a picture of my sink for your article??  :D 

    My kitchen is a MESS!!  

  • Christy

    It’s so hard to do it all! Like you always say, it’s about  balance right? And for the sticky PB jars? I started buying meijer naturals (ing: roasted peanuts) – they come in glass jars that are wonderful for so many other uses that it makes the cleaning part more bearable or I put them in the dishwasher. ;)  

    • http://twitter.com/kitchenstew Katie Kimball

       Christy,
      Yes, I love M. PB in jars! But…I think they just (sigh) switched to plastic. Isn’t it ironic that the M. organic PB has 5 or 6 ingredients and in plastic I think, yet the M. Naturals is just one? That drives me nuts! :) Katie

  • Kate E>

    I also feel guilty for throwing away food scraps (no compost pile) and not saving containers to reuse them. We moved into a tiny apartment (from a three bedroom home) and there’s no space to store empty containers for reuse and I don’t have space outside for a garden or a compost pile. We also have very rusty water (its well water) and the only thing that gets my sinks white is some crazy chemical. We all just have to do the best we can!

  • basyfeltn

    my cheats?  Well it’s not peanut butter jars, cause mom was a depression baby.  I’ve always scraped my peanut butter jar so clean that it’s a cinch to wipe it out, but that paper towel makes me cringe.  LOL  now that I found out that dish washers (full) save heat, water and electricity I often put the well scraped jar into the dishwasher without wiping and save the paper towel.  Mustard containers?  I tossed one last month.  We use four different kinds so they get sort of annoying.  I’ve tossed about one in 10 maybe.  I’m doing ok… not great but ok.  LOL
    I dried two loads of clothes this week, but rainy afternoons here  in PA this week is my excuse and I’m sticking to it.  I got sorta discouraged last week when my hung clothes when through two rains and three days before I got them dried and taken in. 
    My house is a dungeon and my living room light is on right now, at 9:30 am on a sunny morning.  and I’m not going to go tripping over my feet to save money.  it’s dark in here and I’m going to see where I’m walking.
    I’m TRYING to switch to glass, but to be honest, my kitchen has two 30 inch cupboards and has to serve 6-12 people.  I have to be able to nest most things, including glasses and plasticware is more essential than I knew when I took the no more plastic pledge.  I’m pretty good about using the glass I do have though, because i had cancer and hormone problems so I’m scared of plastic.
     
    And budget wins over organic most of the time, unless the prices are close.  I wish I had enough disposable income to do better on that but we’re on a budget diet and the bills are more important if we’re ever to be solvent.  

    I think like most people, if you do about 80 percent of your goals on 80 percent of the days or 80 percent of the time, you’re doing so well compared to what you used to do, why beat yourself up?

  • Kathleen K

    Oh Katie, I must smile at you! As for confessions: I don’t recycle. Our trash collection is only trash. To recycle glass, plastic, etc, I have to load (our trash!) into the van and drive it somewhere. Now we do recycle paper and cardboard (non shiny) and all fruit/veggie scraps—I have compost piles. Not bins, mind you, but piles. Next spring those piles are going to be the most fertile garden beds….so I can source my own local organic produce at very reasonable costs–the price of seeds and a sore back!

    Before I scold you or anyone, including myself, I remember, we are all unique individuals, with different needs and opportunities. We just need to each do our best and not beat ourselves up!

  • http://www.familybalancesheet.org/ Kristia {Family Balance Sheet}

    I’m not drying  laundry outside on my drying racks this year. I’ve done it for years every summer, but I just don’t have the desire to do it this year. GASP, I’m using my dryer. You are not the only one that gets burned out from being green.

  • Catherine

    It is exhausting and sometimes I do much better than at other times but, oh the guilt!  I feel bad if I even throw out a receipt and don’t put it in the recycling…  But I do throw out the dog food cans more often than not.  Hubby leaves them on the cupboard until they are all dried and crusty – yuk.  There are a million other ways I am not being as green as I would like but we are still trying and that is the main thing.

    • http://twitter.com/kitchenstew Katie Kimball

       Catherine,
      We all just do our best! And just to complicate things even further, you shouldn’t actually recycle receipts, believe it or not, because they are full of BPA, and we don’t want Bpa in the recycled paper, especially stuff like toilet paper. Sigh…how confusing can you get, right? But at least you were actually doing good when you thought you were being lazy! ;) Katie

  • Karen

    Sigh….. Me too….. 

     

  • Carolyn

    Oh, Katie, I could hug you! I love to hear your confessions! I love that you’re not perfect, or have completely mastered the green/organic lifestyle!  As always, the biggest draw to you and your blog is your honesty and transparency. Thank you :)

  • http://www.frugal-living-now.com/ Hollylu16

    Sigh. I know what you mean. Knowledge is such a burden, isn’t it?

    I have many of the same cheats you do. I love hanging my clothes on the line, but sometimes it is just too hot to go out in the sun and do it, or I am simply too lazy.

    And I used to compost, but we just can’t grow anything here, so I have pretty much stopped with it and just throw my scraps away. Except for the ones that I freeze to use in bone broth.

    I do that same thing with leaving a light on as a reminder, too! Ha! I thought I was the only one!
     

  • http://twitter.com/EcoBlogz Anastasia Borisyuk

    I do 1, 12, 13, and 15 sometimes too! :)

  • Sandy

    This is the BEST EVER post!  I love all of yours and use them frequently but this one captured me so well.  It’s like we all KNOW what to do, and I count myself a success if I do it at least 5-80% of the time.  The rest of the time will take care of itself in progressively slow forward movements.  My take on it. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/katherine.smith.507 Katherine Smith

    I needed this post today because I’ve been struggling with the amount of dishes that I’ve been washing each and every day.  It gets so overwhelming, and I envey those who just use all convenience foods and toss all the packaging and make one pot recipes.  They don’t even have to get out cutting boards that will have to be washed because their veggies came in a bag…that will be thrown away of course.  Sometimes I envy those of ignorance too.  We all have our “I’m to the point of frustration” days!

    • http://twitter.com/kitchenstew Katie Kimball

       Katherine,
      Grill! Summer is a great time to get a break – take a day where you don’t bake or make anything other than meals, put everything in a grill basket, and try to not have to do hand dishes if you can leave a few things till tomorrow. Some days you need that! :) Katie

  • Rachelmcgarity

    I have ALWAYS dried my diapers in the dryer. I feed my kids McDonald’s (GASP) when I’m tired….or sometimes just to get out of the house and be able to feed them and let them play all in one trip! I don’t always soak my grains. We leave the fans that we have in the bedrooms (for white noise) on all night long…and sometimes all day. I have been contemplating, just contemplating, switching to family cloth…..for three YEARS. lol 

  • willowsprite

    I feel guilty when I buy packaged food that I really shouldn’t, because it’s so wasteful.  As for the other things, they’re easy enough to do and I’ve been doing them all my life anyway.  Like recycling: it’s really easy and it takes just half of a minute to do.

  • Joyspeights

    TIME! ENERGY!  That’s what you need!  But we don’t have it.  And we all have to figure out what is important in life; doing all things in moderation takes TIME to learn and then it will still be tough.  I’d like to encourage you to keep learning and growing and doing ‘right’ by this ol’ earth BUT the trick is, when you just can’t, when you can’t unplug your husband’s phone or you can’t recycle that stupid mustard jar then just don’t and don’t feel guilty about it!  Instead think about the hundreds of things you do do right!!  If it is consuming you with guilt then perhaps you are focusing on the wrong thing anyway!

    Hang in there girl.  As my husband’s father used to always say, “Life doesn’t get any easier.”  :-)

    • http://twitter.com/kitchenstew Katie Kimball

       Joy,
      My husband always says I’m running on negative amounts of time…so yeah, I just have to cut corners and not worry too much. And I don’t – but I thought it would be encouraging to others to see that we’re not all perfect! :) Katie

  • Amy

    I think it’s refreshing to hear this. So many blogs I follow are great for giving useful helpful idea/tips, but realistically that is not me. I will never take my own container to the grocery store to fill with my deli products so I don’t use plastic. I will continue to throw away ziploc bags… although I may choose to use more containers and less bags, but I just cannot make myself crazy over these things. I try to make sensible choices when it comes to organic vs local vs cost. I can’t be 100% green + 100% good mom + 100% good wife + 100% good child of God.(please don’t psychoanalyze the order I listed all those!) It’s a shame the world has changed so much that it takes this much work to do things(feed and take care of our family) normally but I don’t think God wants us to combat it all ourselves in our home 100%. He wants us to look beyond out homes and reach out to others. 

  • Christie

    I threw away a couple of ziplock bags today. I take about 3-4 baths a week in a wonderful old fashioned cast iron tub. It is one of the things in life that makes me feel blissful. I use throwaway panty liners For the most part these decisions have reasoning behind them, and I’m okay with that. I’m mindful.

  • dacia

    This was awesome thanks. I have many cheats too, but as far as most recycable containers, we let the dog clean them out. Lol especially peanut butter, he loves it! Living “green does get very exhausting and sometimes we need to just be sane. Thanks Katie!

  • April

    We all have ways that we are not “green” or whatever.  I always encourage ppl to just do what you CAN do and then gradually add more or whatever.  There are lots of things that I do.. sometimes I am too lazy to go shut off the lights in the other room right away , or like someone else said, too lazy to put the computer on sleep (oh my computer should just be shut off more often, it hardly ever is even off),  I figure when talking about the showers, its not a big deal that i take showers since i only take like 1, maybe 2 a week, so that justifies it, right?! (though gotta say mine really are quick so i don’t think its that big of deal.. ),

  • Mrs. Mom of 6

    Sometimes, I find it’s more important to not be a neurotic mess, than it is to recycle my tuna can. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s really more economical/green to use glass as opposed to plastic, since my kids break it so often, it costs more money, and they won’t take it in the recycling box, so it goes in the trash can…. I can’t always be local or organic, and I refuse to ride the guilt trip for it. 

    I think it’s ridiculous that we can get so obsessive about this stuff that we feel guilty. It’s not a sin to leave the light on sometimes. It’s a sin to lie, and covet and commit adultery. Leaving the light on just doesn’t compare. From a Biblical perspective, this world is under a curse, and is going to be in worse and worse shape until Jesus returns.  I don’t think that is an excuse for just willy-nilly misappropriation of resources, but I also realize that no matter how perfectly I recycle and use less gasoline, the world is STILL going to get worse, and ultimately “die”. Then Christ will create a new heaven and a new earth.

    I also like to keep it in perspective. While I try to do my part, and work towards good stewardship, I realize that it’s a TINY, MINISCULE part, and the biggest offenders are corporations, not families. That relieves alot of the “guilt” that goes with the tuna can or PB jar in the trash.

    The thing I find hardest, is knowing that (sometimes) what I feed my family, can kill them. Sometimes, I get incredible “guilt” (or is it fear?) because I let my kid have a popsicle, or ketchup with HFCS, or I didn’t soak my wheat, or I didn’t grind my own flour. It’s then that I must remember that our bodies are under the curse, no matter how perfetly cleanly we eat, it is not a *guarantee* of perfect health or a long life. It’s good to try to eat healthy food, but my hope in health is not found in my food, it is in Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of both my faith and my body. Real health can only come from Christ and my hope is not in all organic, grass-fed foods. Sometimes the stress I have over eating less than optimally is WORSE for my body, than the less than optimal food I consumed.

    • Leahvalerie86

      Amen amen amen!!!! Love this post and love this comment. You know what else I realized recently? I can pray for this world and the issues wih our food supply and environment. God can honor the good I am trying to do, and through my prayers, He can effect way more change than I can by myself if He so wills. But you are right – it’s a fallen world all around. People who are into organic/natural lifestyles see how sin has affected our environment and food supply more than the average person, and we’re just so very burdened by it. Praise God that I can do what He’s called me to where I’m at, and I can pray for the burdens of what’s beyond my limitations.

  • Michelle R. Rogers

    Katie, you and I are cut from the same cloth (=

  • Ashley Bender

    Katie–My cousins have an awesome method for composting: they purchased a large-ish lidded black trashcan from the ‘big box store’ into which they place their compostables.  Once a week, they lay it over, roll it around, & they’re good to go!  The black helps create heat to decompose things faster, you can put the can anywhere, and there’s no shovel involved :)

    Thanks for being so honest.  We all have our ‘cheats’.  If it’s just causing stress, what’s the point??  We’re living on a dying earth anyway, and nothing we can do will change God’s plan.  I remind myself of this often when I’m feeling guilty for tossing a plastic bottle instead of recycling.

  • http://twitter.com/kitchenstew Katie Kimball

     Tee hee…at least you’re stinking thrilled and I’m not stinking human (although I do need a shower…a nice, long one!). Glad to hear I’ve been a helpful guide! ;) Katie

  • Stephanie M

    When you figure this one out, let me know. I have a whole cupboard full of glass jars :)

  • http://twitter.com/kitchenstew Katie Kimball

     Karen,
    Every time I think I should recycle a spaghetti jar b/c my cupboard for jars is full, something happens that makes it practically empty! I reuse them as often as I can, freezing chicken broth, making yogurt (sometimes they break), and storing leftovers. I’ll use some for storing crafts and whatnot, which gets them out of the kitchen, and whenever I take a meal to a new mom, it’s often soup, so there go a few more. They don’t come IN to the house all that often anymore with all that I make from scratch, just salsa (those often get recycled), spaghetti sauce, PB and olives… I don’t feel badly about recycling them when I have too many though. :) Katie

  • http://twitter.com/kitchenstew Katie Kimball

    Stephanie,

    In case you’re not subscribed to comments, see above :) Katie

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