Goodness. We have been using the same decorations for years! I see no need to replace the whole set. I will purchase a few things to replace broken, damaged and lost but nothing too much. Last year we got a good amount of new stuff so nothing new this year.
There are some that we always use, but the rest I tend to change and rearrange. Since my kids were little, my mother sent each of us an engraved ornament each year. Those, I will always hold onto. I also have a few handmade items, stuff the kids made, or other special ones that were gifted to me (that I hold onto but don't always use). The rest of the stuff is my collection of things I've picked up at thrift stores, post Christmas sales, or made myself. I like to change things up every year, so I go back and forth within the collection or even mix and match. I'm sure I could do with some paring down though, so thanks for the resources. I should definitely pass some things along.
I like buying holiday decorations after the fact when they go on sale. You can get a lot of great decorations for up to 70% off. This is typically when I replace my decorations for the following year. However, I am skeptical to buy Christmas lights because I feel like they always break.
I ended up using the jingle bell garlands I bought at Dollar Tree that I thought I was going to use as freebies for customers. The strands were just the right size to hang on my doors. I kind of wish I had a few more, since I have two exterior doors without them and two with them. I haven't been back to Dollar Tree, though. I'll see if they have any more if I go next week, but otherwise, I'll just do without them. When I went through the decorations in my Christmas closet, I decided to get rid of some of the ornaments and decorations that had seen better days. I'm not as much in the Christmas spirit this year, so am less sentimental. That's a good state of mind to be in when going through items you might want to discard. There are still more I want to donate or throw out, but I'll probably wait until after Christmas at this point. I ended up buying 6 strands of lights. 2 were for the tree, 1 for the mantel, and 3 for a sign I'm making. Those are smaller strands, although they were around the same price.
For this season, I bought Christmas decorations worth $150 to give my decorations a silver motif. They are all glittering silver from the balls of different sizes, flowers and petals with shiny dews made of glass. I change my decoration once every 5 years or so, not really to save money but for the lack of time in buying new decorations. I also bought some lights because Christmas lights don't really last for more than 3 years.
We tend to use the same Christmas decorations from year to year. Occasionally we have bought a few new ones to add to what we already have. Right now though, I think the decorations we have are adequate enough to do the decoration we need, so there would be no point in going out to buy new ones. When decorating the tree, we can use the same decorations and change them around to make it look a bit different. We actually have some very old decorations from many years ago and they still help to make the tree look nice. When it comes to lights though, that's a bit different as these sometimes tend to malfunction with some on the string working while others are not. So there are times when we have to buy a new string of lights.
