A graphic of a halloween scene with pumpkins, a ghost, skeleton, witches hat, bats and a sign saying decorations, disasters, fiendish fancy dress
Episode 56 – Decluttering and organising halloween decorations and dressing up

In this podcast, Lesley and Ingrid chat about how to keep halloween decorations and dressing up costumes in order. For lots of families, halloween is a time for decorating the house and wearing fancy dress costumes but the decorations and dressing up clothes need to be kept under control otherwise they can add to the clutter.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of the declutter hub podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your hosts professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen and Lesley Spellman. 

Ingrid  0:21  
Hello and welcome listeners to Episode 56 of the declutter hub Podcast. I'm Ingrid and I'm Lesley. If you have clutter and want to short it out, this is the show for you, as well as the free resources on our declutter hub.com website like the podcast checklist and guest blogs. We also have an exclusive area where we guide our members step by step to declutter their homes, we realise this can be very overwhelming. So we're there every step of the way, with courses live q&a s and a community discussion. In today's podcast episode, Lesley and I are talking about organising for Halloween. Now, Lesley, you absolutely love Halloween, right?

Lesley  1:03  
Don't get me started on Halloween. It all started really, I think it's fair to say that when I was growing up in the kind of 70s here in the UK, Halloween wasn't really a big deal at all. And it was all a bit a little bit scary. And it wasn't very community focused. But when I moved to America in 2001, so I was kind of 30 odd. And my kids were little really little. And that's the first time when I saw Halloween, and I knew it was a big deal in America, but I didn't know how much of a big deal it was. And so I was there for two Halloweens, and I absolutely loved everything about it. And the main reason why I love it so much is because it gets all of the community together. And I think that's such a lovely thing. And I think for years in this country, we had this kind of a little bit of a downer on it and thinking it was just loads of kids coming to house asking for a pound and things like that, you know, and it wasn't that kind of community driven thing that it is in America. So yeah, in America, it was it's a big deal. They celebrated within the school day as well. All the kids dress up without exception, all houses have sweets to give to the children. So it's very much a community thing. And I absolutely love it. And we then brought a little bit of that Halloween spirit back to the UK with us. And so we like Halloween over here now, too.

Ingrid  2:19  
That's so interesting, because like you when I grew up in Holland, Halloween was not a thing at all, it was not celebrated at all. And when I lived in the US for one year back in the beginning of the 90s that was the first time I actually saw the house decorated in the in the in the pumpkins and the orange colours. Orange is a good colour. Obviously being from the Netherlands, I think maybe that's why I love Halloween, I'm not sure. But now I do set up some decorations at home. And I've always been trick or treating with the kids. And we really enjoyed and this is actually the first year we're not going to go trick or treating. So the kids are absolutely distraught. But they're both teenagers now. So I've said right enough already with a trick or treating. Let's stay home. And let's make sure we've got sweets for the kids that are coming to our house now. But my favourite bit actually is visiting the pumpkin farm and just choosing a whole array of pumpkins and using them as decorations to decorate the house. And my husband makes wonderful pumpkin soup. So actually my neighbour said the other day Oh, it's my favourite time of year you've got to bring the pumpkin soup really soon again. So it's going around and and it's not again, community spirit is the pumpkin soup meet our neighbours.

Lesley  3:29  
The nice thing about Halloween is not quite so focused on gift giving and money and things like that and buying you know, elaborate gifts. It's just cuter, isn't it? The most that you're going to outlays for a few decorations, a costume and some sweets for your neighbor's kids. And I just think that's a really, really lovely thing. We fell in love with it so much because our kids were the perfect age. And there were like seven and four, you know, so it was just so lovely to take them out there. And I really really fell in love with that. And I actually fell in love with with everything about the Americans the way that they decorate their homes for different seasons, whether that's Valentine's Day or Thanksgiving or Halloween and Christmas, you know, they really do do go overboard and I absolutely love that. And so we consequently go quite overboard ourselves. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, yes. Yeah, I've

Ingrid  4:13  
kind of remember from seeing some photos from last year you kind of go all out for decorating your house, right?

Lesley  4:20  
We do. Let's just say we do. We do have kind of, we tried to do it in a tasteful way. But Steve, my husband, he's the Halloween guy. So he sets it all up absolutely loves doing that. But this year, we're all the way so we might not do it. And so my son Nathan's, like you can't not do it. People are expecting it. You know people love going to our house to get sweets and things I'm like, okay, that's fine. So I don't quite know what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks because we're going to be away for Halloween so it's not gonna be anyone here and then you can't decorate or your house or your house up and then not allow the children in school and get sweets it just seems so mean it's like Come in come in and then give them absolutely nothing. But that comes at a price because you've got to then store all the decorations and trust me I've we've got beer Like scarecrows, and scary things and models that you know, and these things are big Halloween decorations tend to be quite big.

Ingrid  5:07  
So have you got like a googly ghost or something or like a tombstone in your garden? Or what kind of decorations are we talking about it

Lesley  5:15  
like all of the above all of the above, but you know, they are all quite big kind of dramatic things, aren't they? So they're all quite big things. And so every year, you know, just before Halloween, or new Halloween decorations will start coming in. And that's my husband going crazy. And I'm constantly trying to like keep everything under control. So it doesn't get completely out of control with the decorations. So but you know, it needs to be managed. And you need to view Halloween decorations, Christmas decorations, Thanksgiving decorations, whatever that is in the same way. And you will over time, you will get fed up of some of the ones that you've got. And so you need to go through a decluttering process with decorations in the same way that you do everything else in your home.

Ingrid  5:52  
Let's start the No. So where does all this stuff, literally.

Lesley  5:57  
So it was all right, you see when when Americans with a huge basement, it was unfinished, it could just put all these things in. But now I've got quite a small space, we don't know if I mentioned before on the podcast, I've not got a garage, I've not got a laugh. But I've got a storage room downstairs, I've got a tiny bit of that storage room, probably, I would say it's a two metre square section, where I've got all my decorations, and I try and keep it to that section. Obviously, all of the boxes get piled up on top of each other. But they're all there and they're reasonably accessible.

Ingrid  6:26  
So it's important, exactly great that you go all out. But of course, realistically, it needs to live somewhere it needs to have a home because if it starts to float around in five different places, that's when things get really into muddle. Right? Yeah. So you've got everything together. Now I remember you mentioning something about orange boxes in a previous podcasts. Is that the famous Halloween boxes that you have?

Lesley  6:50  
Yeah, I think I think that's what yeah, I'm always very jealous of the Americans, because we've got such great storage boxes, really. And we're getting better over in this country. But yeah, so I've got red and green boxes for Christmas. And I've got orange and black boxes for Halloween. And so it's very clear what everything is. And it's all lovely. But after we did the last podcast, because I was thinking, Oh, you can only get those in America. And that obviously is not true. Because we've we've really caught up maybe not quite as much as the Americans with Halloween over here. But it's a big deal here. Now, it's not the same as it was 20 years ago when I went to America. Absolutely not. You know, people go all out here as well to now. So yeah.

Ingrid  7:25  
Oh, yeah. I mean, we do have some lovely streets close to our house where we love to go trick or treating with the kids, because we know that the decorations are gonna be really good. And, you know, some houses really go all out now. But it's, it's lovely to see.

Lesley  7:39  
Of course it is it's the only time that that you see the neighbourhood kids really isn't it just to me, because we can't play out like they used to. And so the old common was so excited, and I just absolutely love it. And I got really fed up with people that bah humbug. You know, it's kind of like, they just come and they want things and I don't want all those kids knocking at my door. I'm like, why not? That's so cute. You

Ingrid  7:59  
know, they're so cute in their little costume with their, with their little Halloween baskets and grabbing like, like, as much sweets in one hand is they? Absolutely love it. So I have a big question for you then. Are you decluttering when you put all decorations away? Or are you actually decluttering when you set it all up? So how does that work, then,

Lesley  8:23  
because setting up for Halloween is quite a big job in our house, you know, it's going to take a full day really probably to get that done. So it's not something that we do just the day before. So quite often here in this country, people will only decorate for Halloween for one day or two days. Yeah. Whereas we'll probably leave our Halloween decorations up for a week. And so what I try and do is preempt it a little bit and look at the decorations beforehand. Because what I want to do if there is anything that I want to offload, and that I don't want for this year's decorating, I want to be able to send it to the charity shop so that they can sell it before Halloween. Because the last thing that I want the charity shops to have to do is to store that stuff for another year until that season comes around. And obviously no one's going to buy Halloween decorations after the events while they might do if it's cheap, but you want the charity shops to get the most money for it, don't you and that's obviously going to be before Halloween. So yeah, so I will probably start looking at Halloween decorations a week before, take out the things that I want to use, put them up and then send the rest of charity.

Ingrid  9:20  
Okay, so you really try you make a conscious decision to take all the books out of your basement, you take it all out, you look at it and you make decisions. What am I going to put outside and up in the house? Have I done enough now and that immediate goes to the car and you try to drive it to the charity shop as quickly as possible. So they can actually do a last minute sale and get some good hopefully some good money for it before the holiday is over.

Lesley  9:47  
Yeah. And I think it's a very transient thing as well because kids grow and then you know, kids grow every year and they're coming out of Halloween costumes. You know, they don't want the same trick or treating box they don't have the sort of the little basket things Don't have them wins wants to get to a certain age, there's always things that have gone because your kids are growing up.

Ingrid  10:04  
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about then, after Halloween is done, I assume it's quite a big job to put it all away again. So what what are any practical tips for our listeners for that, Lesley,

Lesley  10:18  
I think the most important thing to me is to get the job done and get the job finished. You know, because what we see quite a lot of clients homes is unfinished jobs, like people are going to take this decorations down because they know the needs come down, but they're not packing them and putting them away. So it's really important to finish the job. And make sure that if you have your Halloween decorations scattered around inside the house, which do as we do, as well, and quite often people will have Halloween parties. Make sure you look on the back of every little doorknob, same as you do at Christmas, you know, you put everything away. And then you see some little random thing and your toilet downstairs or something. Didn't put it away every

Ingrid  10:54  
year.

Lesley  10:56  
Even though I know, I've got to do that. It's like a steal. You know, like Brian was scour the house and see it. And trust me, I've got an eye for anything that's out of place. But still, you know, second week in January, I'm seeing a little sleigh bell on the back of a door somewhere like

Ingrid  11:15  
I think I've had this three years in a row now. I'm like walking around around the house, thinking I have everything. I'm sure I have everything and then suddenly, you think what is it doing there? So I hear you, I hear you. This makes listeners, this makes me really laugh because I have the same thing. But I agree with you. It's very important to finish the job and actually put it in the boxes, organise it and put it away. I think boxes with lids is quite important.

Lesley  11:44  
Yeah, critical. Yeah. Critical. Yeah. Because it needs to stack down. There are stackable boxes, you know if you can get the ones that stack on top of each other, but lids are ideal. Yeah. You know, because you can still get ones that stack that are not listed.

Ingrid  11:55  
Yeah. But so what would you do if you've got like these gigantic Halloween decorations that can't fit in any box?

Lesley  12:01  
Well, first of all, when the Halloween decorations start to come at the end of September that my husband husband has ordered from Amazon and I see these huge boxes, my heart sinks, because I'm like, where are we gonna store

Ingrid  12:11  
it. And he's like, stop, stop being mean, it's for the kids.

Lesley  12:16  
So a we start arguing about the stuff that's coming in. And be Yeah, you just have to try and store it in the box that it came and if it's not gonna fit in one of your plastic boxes,

Ingrid  12:25  
I've got a little top tip as well before, to kind of wrap up this decorations thing. Of course, I would assume that some of your decorations have batteries and cables and electrics to, to make sure it works and runs and it makes noises and sounds. So don't forget to take out your batteries out of your any equipment that you have, because they can definitely leak if you store them away for a year. And then the Halloween decoration gets unusable. So take those batteries out before you store it away. Right. Yeah, that's

Lesley  12:58  
a really good idea. I probably don't do that. I'm fine. totally gonna do that this year. This is a difference between Ingrid and I, you know, Halloween decorations. And she's like, yep, you need to be practical and you need to take the batteries out of things. So you get in both sides of the story here listeners.

Ingrid  13:16  
I love it when she when she confesses this kind of stuff on the podcast. Yeah, I think we've got everything, haven't we? I think now because there's no of course I one thing I want to know now. Do you dress up for Halloween? Because of course I've never been here for Halloween. I don't Oh, this.

Lesley  13:32  
I don't. Oh, is that really disappointing? Yes. The house is all decorated. But I don't I don't dress up I did when I was in America because I went to Halloween parties, which I also absolutely loved. Because a difference as well between America and here is that the kids on the adult stand over here. It's more that our kids dress up in like spooky things like witches and Yeah, what else? Yeah, like wizards, skeletons, skeletons, and that kind of thing. Whereas in America, it's just standard dress up, isn't it? And so they don't just wear spooky stuff. They might go a Superman or Batman or a princess or whatever. And so it's just an opportunity to dress up and they do these little Halloween parades and all the kids wear different things. And so it's very different now and we still definitely have that kind of spooky Halloween thing going on here in terms of dress up. Yeah. Which leads us very neatly onto dressing up.

Ingrid  14:23  
Yes, dressing up. I think we we need to make a distinction between adult costumes for Halloween and kids costumes. And actually, I was thinking about this because I was recently working with a client and we found her kids Halloween costumes in a dressing up box. And I went perfect. This is the great time to take the soul out. And because we were shorting the costumes out and we found the Halloween costumes and I went right this is the perfect opportunity to go. Does it actually still fit? Because of course, especially little kids, they just grow so quickly that one year They might be able to fit a costume. If you're lucky, you get two years out of it. More often than not, they won't. So it's important that you take the costumes out, let them try it on, does it still fit? Maybe if they've been using it for dressing up over the summer or for other, maybe needs left a little wash these costumes, because maybe there's some things on there that you think I'm not really sure what this is. So check that out. And so you have it ready. And also, because if you've realised that it doesn't fit, you still have time to go order something or go to the shops and find something else. If dressing up with Halloween with the kids is something you do. So I think that's really important. But of course, that leads to the question, then, what do you do with these costumes? Do not live in a in a dressing up box? Or have you got a separate box for the costumes.

Lesley  15:51  
I think it's really gonna depend on the age of your children. So I think while my children were little, I definitely had the Halloween costumes in with the standard dress up, because they might want to dress up as a wizard or which one day, do you not? I mean, not, it's not exclusively a Halloween thing. Yeah, so I definitely had them all together, unless it was something very specific dress UPS a bit of a nightmare, isn't it, you know, it's something as professional organisers we come across. And I think people expect us to have these fantastic solutions to organising issues. And dress up is one that I always really struggle with. Because unless you've got, of course, there are beautiful things out there on the market to store your dressing up costumes, and you'll see them all over magazines. But the reality is, fancy dress tends to breed and dress up doesn't it and people you know, it's quite, it's not an expensive, outlay generally is eight, you know, you can get them for a few pounds, we tend to gather them along the way. And so the reason they get chucked into a box, and there's just this missing mishmash of things, there's always loads and loads of different components to address in a part of it as well, your kids play and you want them to play. But equally, you know, to get that costume back and get all the parts together, it's not really going to happen is so it's something that needs to be managed. So dress up, if anybody's got a fantastic solution to dress up, I'd like to hear it. But for me, it's just more about having a big container. If you've got a hanging rail, fantastic. If you've got space for hanging rail, they're brilliant. And you can also change the size of the hanging rails upside down depending on the size of your children. So hanging male is a good thing. If you've got space for that a bit genuinely I would say use a trunk use a truck use a big container. And just chuck them all in and every now and again just have a little bit of a sawed out and to be fair, that's probably the only thing that you can really do. I mean, what do you do? Yeah,

Ingrid  17:39  
when the kids were little it was with all the other costumes. I think we had some sort of top we're all the the one send the princess dresses and the pirate eye and all of those things, including the Halloween costumes left. And now when the kids are older, we don't have a dressing of books, of course. So they're now in one of the wardrobes upstairs to hang them up. But I think you're right. I mean, the costumes, especially with Halloween, they've got like this broom, and you're like, where on earth do I fit a broom you know, that doesn't fit in at all like the massive witches hats that have like these massive iron things in them. So you can't really squash them because then the whole hat looks wonky. So it's really kind of trying to find the right area for the but I would say put as much together as you can. And if you're all adults, now maybe a box with a lid is the best solution and that it goes with the decorations. So and you can stack it on top. So there's different options, I think there.

Lesley  18:35  
It's tricky. It really is tricky. And I think talking about those extra little bits, you know, like pirate, eye patches and all these little things that we're talking about, it might be useful to get a box to gather all of those together in one place, even though they're not. Because I think it would just would be too hard to try and keep it with the outset. And so it might be just useful to have somewhere in that you know, if you're looking for accessories for an outfit kids. This is where they are live and we'll rummage through them and actually when you finish with the accessory you know we've got little belts on princess dresses haven't wear that come off. Put them back in that box and so they don't get lost because it's a shame isn't it? Yeah. And you know, the one thing that I would say about fancy dress is charity shops absolutely love fancy dress outfits because they sell them really quickly. And but it's nice to have the full outfit, isn't it?

Ingrid  19:20  
Yeah, I think also personally for me, you know, I mean I love decluttering and I love organising it, but also when my client but when we're doing the trunk with all the dressing up stuff should look or English or we put it all separately in a plastic bag sound like kits don't work that way. No, when especially when they're little you want them to be able to open a truck and combine a pirate dress with a Halloween broom and a pirate patch and because that's what they do, and it's that creative place. So I think although it looks beautifully in all these different kinds of labelled containers in real life, it doesn't work that way. So um, I think you can do that when they're older and it's just an occasion and you can pump back and away but when they're Small, just do it all together in a trunk, let them enjoy it and get the most out of the costumes while they're still fit them. Because I

Lesley  20:07  
think you're absolutely right. And it takes me aback because that's one thing where the creativity is at its best, isn't it? And you have to let it be. And that's one of the things where as a parent, you can encourage and I can say, I can put a little box and ask your children's to put the accessories back into it. But how likely is that to happen? Probably pretty unlikely if I'm truly honest. And so as a parent, you're probably going to if you want it to be a little bit more orderly, that's something that you're going to need to get involved in as with most play rooms, or toys, or whatever your story. Yeah, yeah. So that's just the reality of children. And it's just so lovely to see them, dress it up and enjoying themselves.

Ingrid  20:40  
I think last thing I want to point I want to make about costumes and dressing up is of course, a lot of people use with Halloween, they've got these makeup, kids makeup, they're faced with like scary things. Make sure you check if it's from last year or the year before. Don't wait until Halloween itself to look at the packaging and maybe have a look that still look good. Does it still smell good? And if you think to yourself, do I really want to put this on my face, it might be time to declutter it and get another little set in the shops if you are going to because the last thing you want is to have a rational look for your face because the Halloween kit was like five years old and a bit dodgy and you really don't want that.

Lesley  21:25  
No, you're so right. Right,

Ingrid  21:27  
Lesley? Yeah, it's nearly we're on the count that you know, it's nearly Halloween.

Lesley  21:32  
Oh, so I got to decide. Are we going to decorate the house now?

Ingrid  21:36  
No, I know. Yeah. So I feel

Lesley  21:39  
like it's going to be taken out of my hands and my husband and my youngest son are going to make that decision. So we will see or we will see whether so

Ingrid  21:46  
at some point we will report back to you listeners if Lesley decorated her house or not. We wish you all a lovely Halloween and I do inspire to decorate your home. What's going to happen in your house? Are you dressing up your trick or treating? Are you decorating? We'd love to know and let us know in the comments. And we'd love to hear what your plans are. So thanks so much for taking the time to listen today. If you'd like to get more tips and advice please follow us on social media. We are an Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as at declutter hub, and we've got a lovely Facebook group where we check all things clutter, you can search for the declutter hub community, we'd love to see you there. Don't forget our fantastic membership. We're offering step by step online course live q&a sessions and a membership community. Have a look on members dot declutter hub.com for more information. If you don't want to miss the next weekly episode, please subscribe to the declutter hub podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify and Stitcher and it will pop into your notification seeds Fridays. See you next time.

Outro  22:48  
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