As I have gotten older, holiday decorations have been a slight struggle. I like decorating. I like having something festive and exciting for the coming holiday season. Still, as I have gotten older, I have leaned toward holiday decorations to feel more like actual decor. Having items stored for nearly 10-11 months just to put them out for a month or two seems like a massive waste. Also, many of these holiday decorations are tacky and cheesy, made from cheap material that tends to break easily just sitting in a garbage dump. Cheap or tacky things might be cute, but it just makes your home look cheap and tacky.
Since I have become more concerned about my impact on the world, I have made more of an effect to make my decorations. Making sustainable holiday decorations allows you to create something you think looks pretty and gives you confidence in how you decorate your home. It becomes something that you might even feel benefits to have all year round. Making sustainable holiday decorations and decor adds so much more to your home and makes something completely unique and original. Having holiday decorations as decor makes your home one of a kind but also allows you to create something sustainable and multi-purposeful.
Some of the easiest DIY items to make can be used throughout the house. Other DIYs can use products or items bought at the store. These projects should be cheap and easy, which makes them relatively fun.
1. Garland- Garland is the perfect DIY item for decorating a home and making it more festive. It is great for Halloween and the December holidays. It can be repurposed by decorating a tree outside or elsewhere in the home. If you use easily decomposable items, you aren’t harming the environment. It’s a simple item and looks, but it makes all the difference. A garland gives the room and decor something extra, either strung up on the wall or hung by the fireplace. I have made an orange garland from oranges that I grew in the backyard strung together by hemp string. I generally use hemp string for wrapping presents, so the string doesn’t have to be anything fancy or unique. It’ll be best to use something that can decompose if you plan on stringing up some trees outside. However, you can also make dough figures for generalized holiday decoration. Utilizing cornflour or flour in general, baking soda, and water makes an easy, sustainable clay-like item. Using cookie cutters like stars or anything that is in theme with the holiday, you can easily cut the clay into a shape. Place a hole in the middle, and you have a fabulous garland. Even with the most elaborate decoration, a garland gives the room extra pizzazz.
2. Plants or foliage- Incorporating various-sized pumpkins for Halloween or various festive plants makes the home feel more homely. It doesn’t bring more plastic into the world. Christmas trees or poinsettia is romantic and set the mood. Also, utilizing the pumpkin seeds after you finish the item allows you to have a deliciously nutritious snack for future use. Breaking up the pumpkin and tree for compost in the backyard also helps your garden thrive and the wild animals in your backyard to have snacks in the best way possible.
3. Thrift your festivities- Instead of buying new Christmas or Hanukkah items from the store, try searching for those items at a thrift store. Thrift stores tend to have vintage-looking holiday items that look unique and are entirely original. Some people will spend hundreds to thousands of dollars yearly for festive things that they eventually have no use for and decide to give up. You can be a lucky participant in that. As the lucky searcher for such items, you become someone who receives either one-of-a-kind vintage items or costly items that allow you to decorate your home the best you seek. For example, candleholders work for any occasion and are readily available at a thrift store. Also, some of the simplest items can be repurposed to be made into extraordinary pieces.
4. Make some art from your holiday- This is more directed towards Halloween. Still, ghost art or spooky art is a fun little craft you can do that will allow your home to be less cluttered by holiday junk and filled with something that you would enjoy for the rest of the year. It also allows you to have a sense of pride because it is something you made that you can utilize. Thrifting used frames and used art supplies helps the environment but saves you money.
5. Fill up the nooks and crannies- If you want to be a maximalist in your decoration, add small crafting items like bats, stars, etc., to make your home look amazing. It can be done with recycled paper or even recycled fabric. Was there a fabric of a dress that seemed pretty at the thrift store? Try using that fabric as a paper DIY design. Using the already established decor as your home to make festive makes your everyday items part of your holiday design. If you want it to be firm, you can mod podge it to make it tighter. You can even use that fabric paper design for a wreath.
6. Wreath- There is something about wreaths that just make the house seem a little more festive. It decorates the outside introducing your guest to the home way before they step in. Wreaths were more conventionally used for Christmas, but they are a homely, welcoming feature that should be used all year. There are so many ways to decorate a wreath. You can use rope, clay items, flowers, fake flowers, fabric shapes, you name it. A wreath makes the home look like universal decor instead of just a seasonal one.
While there is always a choice to over-decorate, being a conscious buyer allows your home and the things bought to have a purpose. Being less in decoration is strangely also being more. Focusing on finding things that can be repurposed for your home all year or repurposing used items you don’t want anymore into something more festive makes your decorating feel more like an art piece. Instead of buying something easy and cheap, focus on something that really sets you apart.
