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What To Put On Your Front Door After Christmas & Care for …


You love Christmas.  You have been decorated since November for Christmas.  Now you are just so ready to swap it out and do something fresh for the rest of the winter, but what?  It is not spring yet, and you do not want to return to your fall theme….

Only need to change your door?  Try removing everything and let the beauty of your door shine through in its simplicity.  Decorate again with the arrival of Valentine’s day, or Easter, or the first day of spring.

  • Remove everything that screams Christmas,
    •  whether in words or images.  Words or phrases with Ho, Ho, Ho, or Season’s Greetings for example.
    • Blow up yard displays
    • Christmas lighting on house and landscape
    • Santa or Santa paraphernalia
    • Stockings hung or presents
    • Nativity items
  • Change out your colors.  If you had a red and green Christmas, look at blue themed Christmas Pinterest pages for inspiration ( minus the items that scream Christmas, see above). 
  • Change your texture.   If you had soft, delicate, fine textures in your Christmas decor, change up the feel for more solid, bold textures.
  • Change the formality of your display.  This is a great time to experiment with the feel of your entrance.  Is it normally more formal? Use a few casual touches or play with asymmetry.  Usually very generic? Add a few personal touches that showcase some of you and your hobbies. 

 This can be one of the shortest front porch decor times of year (except other Holidays, but this would be driven by you, not the holiday) play with styles a bit.  

Always wanted to try out a few rustic elements?  Or add some formality? Try it. Now is a great time to play with style, so your door has had an obvious change.  On an aside, don’t you hate it when you redecorate, and it is not noticed? 

 Still, stay in a winter theme.  Change up the color palette and style.  Go big change.  

Always have a themed front porch decked out?  Go minimalistic, a welcome mat, a front porch chair.  Make a change, try something new. Have fun !! 

Related Questions:

How to remove sap from your front door, hands, and deck.

To remove Christmas tree sap, or pine pitch from your hands, rub them with oil, such as olive or other cooking oil.  Cover with oil and rub until they no longer feel sicky, then wash with regular soap and water. You may need to do this more than once.  

If your front door is painted or otherwise is safe from oil, use the oil there too, otherwise use rubbing alcohol, or hand sanitizer.  The alcohol will break up the sticky sap and you can then wash it away. Hand sanitizer stays longer without evaporating because if its gel qualities if there is a lot of sap, you might want to start there.

On your deck, rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer is a good choice.  As before, always wash your deck or door down after the pitch is removed.  It never hurts to make sure there is no residue.

What to do with real wreaths after removing them?

Do Not Burn in your fireplace, this is very dangerous.  Burning outside in a bonfire, where permitted, is fine.

  Clip any wire holding the greenery onto the frame, compost the living greenery, and reuse or recycle the frame and wire.

Use the needles as a breakdown-resistant layer on top of muddy paths.

Mulch the perennial gardens with bows from the Christmas tree and wreaths.

If disposing of, take greenery off wireframes and send them to yard waste for disposal. 

How to store preserved wreaths until next season?

Most important is to keep out of the dust and keep dry. 

Plain preserved evergreen wreaths can be stored in a 30-gallon tote. Just line them up like cookies in a sleeve.  

Decorated wreaths or more fragile berry wreaths can be either stored in hard-sided molded specialty wreath containers or hung up with an upside-down trash bag over them, hole punched for the hanger.  If you have a lot of these, store them in a dedicated Christmas decorations closet, hung on the clothes rod. A spring-loaded HD curtain rod can be put up in your storage area, or a rolling coat rack can serve as well.

If in unpacking your preserved wreaths you find they are dusty, a can of compressed air goes a long way 🙂


Toni

Toni has a bachelor degree in Plant & Soil Science, has lived, gardened and growing all over the US, in Vermont, Tennessee, Idaho, coastal North Carolina and Virginia. She has been sharing her knowledge through writing, one on one consulting and talking to anyone who wants to listen at social gatherings everywhere : )