Decorating Christmas trees are just one way people celebrate the holiday season however getting a tree inside you home and decorating it is no easy task and can leave you with a mess. Needles and tree sap can be difficult to remove from your carpets and old decorations typically gather a lot of dust during the off-season. Here are five holiday cleaning tips to help stay clean while decorating your Christmas tree.

Remove Sap from Your Carpet:  To remove tree sap from your carpet start by putting a small amount of rubbing alcohol on the sap.  This will cause the sap to loosen up.  Next take a damp towel and blot the area.  Keep adding rubbing alcohol and blot the area as needed.

Clean Up Tree Needles: Christmas tree needles are small and pointy which causes them to get tangled in carpet fibers. To remove needles from your carpet start by vacuuming your carpets to remove the large bulk amount that are loose. Remove stuck needles by dabbing at them with a strip of duct tape. We also recommend putting a garbage bag around the bottom of the tree to collect the needles as they fall.

Dust Ornaments: When kept in storage for the majority of the year, tree ornaments and holiday decorations gather dust. To clean delicate items such as decorations we recommend using a microfiber cloth. Microfiber cloths generate an electrostatic charge which attracts dust making the perfect cleaning tool for cleaning and polishing ornaments.

Broken Ornaments: Ornaments and decorations made of glass or plastic can be very fragile and will leave you with dangerous shards to clean up when shattered. You can safely pick up broken glass and plastic by dabbing at the shards with Play-Do. Just make sure no one plays with the Play-Do afterwards.

Artificial Tree Storage: Let’s face getting a real Christmas tree can be quite the hassle which is why many people are going with the alternative of getting an artificial tree. During the off-season we recommend storing your artificial tree in a plastic garbage bag. This will prevent it from collecting dust and you won’t have to worry about cleaning it next holiday season.