Sweat the Small Stuff: What to Have on Hand Before You Decorate

The fun part of holiday decorating is the colorful ribbon, the glowing lights, and the sentimental ornaments. You’re excited to start, then realize you don't have the boring supplies you need to finish. Boxes cover the living room, the mantel and porch sit half-done, and you lose an hour to the hardware store—or a full day to overnight delivery.

Here's everything to have on hand before you start, so you can actually finish in a weekend.

1. Floral Wire Use it to attach ornaments to garland, wire dried orange slices into a cluster, and hold a bow's loops where you shaped them. Get green wire—it disappears against the garland. Unlike ribbon or thread, wire holds a bend, so the ornament stays angled toward the street instead of spinning to face the wall.

2. Zip Ties For heavy greenery, swags, and anything with real weight, zip ties do what wire can't—they cinch and lock. Use them anywhere something heavy could fall with wind or regular wear and tear. Trim the end after it’s secure, and no one will know it’s there. 

3. Hot Glue Gun and Sticks Sometimes, you've gotta go for the glue. After getting halfway through adding orange clusters and dried roses to my wreath, I give up and glue them exactly where I want. After years of doing this, I finally realized hot glue is sometimes the place to start—especially if you're short on time.

4. Command Hooks, Multiple Sizes Buy small and large in the same trip. The tiny ones position light strands, hang snowflakes from the ceiling, and stealthily hold a sprig of greenery on a mirror. The large ones carry wreaths and swags on windows and doors.

5. Fishing Line Required for any ceiling installation, and for anything you want to look like it's floating—ornaments off a porch railing, snowflakes from a tree limb. It's also the cleanest way to hang a wreath on glass.

6. Twine The opposite of fishing line—here you want the string to show. Use jute or cotton twine for stringing dried citrus garland and DIY ornaments, where the texture is part of the look.

7. S Hooks I use these to hang ornament clusters from the hanging flower pot hooks on my porch. Anywhere you already have a bracket, an S hook turns it into a place to hang something without adding new hardware.

8. Nails and a Hammer The garland is hanging just the wrong way? The wreaths are starting to slip? Trust me—you're going to reach for a hammer at some point during this installation. Don’t wait to go hunting for them.