Spending time with family and friends is a time to get together, enjoy activities indoors and outdoors, holidaying at the seaside or game farms, or simply sharing game nights at home while making a braai, drinking a glass of wine and kicking up your feet after a full day’s serious fun. 

Make this time special and enjoy the company of friends and family. The problem is that once we get back to our usual routine we are left with myriad bits and pieces until the next holiday season comes around once more.  

Holidays are a time for giving and sharing, but once all those delightful presents have been opened it is often a case of what to with all those extra bits and pieces for the home such as new appliances, toys for the kids, games and even the big fold-up Christmas tree with the many pretty decorations that looked so good but are now a little forlorn with the festive season a distant memory. 

Where will you pack that huge windsurfer until the next summer season comes around? Perhaps you were fortunate to go skiing and needed the extra clothing and other equipment but now find that all that extra sports equipment and accessories have no real home. 

It is time to make room for a whole new chapter and the only way moving forward is to be ruthless without too much sentiment. The best solution for all the paraphernalia and an uncluttered environment is to make full use of self-storage

Smart ways to free up your home after the holidays with self-storage 

• You could easily have acquired new items in the home that need to be placed in their respective spaces. What do you do with all those new things? If you have too much “stuff” the easiest way to declutter your world is by using self–storage to make room. It is time to place your older items in storage and replace these with new things wherever possible, adding a breath of fresh air to your environment 

• Cleaning can prove to be challenging at the best of times. How do you manage to clean your space if it is filled with items and clutter in every corner and on every surface? Whether you have added extra furniture such as fold-up beds to accommodate your guests and bought extra things such as crockery, cutlery and linen, it is time to pack these away until the next lot descends on you during the next holiday season. Pack all non-essential items in your self-storage to free up floor and countertop space to enable you to clean in all those hard-to-reach corners. If you are planning to use the items before the next holiday season, bring these back once the clean has been completed 

• Seasonal items need to be stored until they are required. Festive items are certainly some of these, plus these could include cookie cutters and large roasting pans that are not used throughout the year; it might be a great idea to put these away until you need them again 

• Games, puzzles and other holiday items can also be put away until next year to be shared and enjoyed all over again 

These are a handful of handy tips for decluttering using self-storage to the best advantage. Post-holidays are often fraught with a little bit of an anti-climax after all the fun and festivities become distant memories. Use Easy Store self-storage on a month on month basis with no locked-in leases as this is an affordable option to make for a clutter-free environment. Free up your space, declutter and give your environment a good cleaning, and before you know it, the post-holiday blues will be forgotten with a whole new chapter waiting to be unpacked.