The Best Ways To Store Seasonal Dishware

It is officially November— meaning it’s time to find your kitchen storage containers and bring out the seasonal dishware. Bring on the dinner parties, holiday get-togethers, potlucks, and festive happy hours. If you love festive dishware and have a lot of it, it’s your time to shine.

If you haven’t stored your seasonal dishware and it currently lives in the same space your regular, everyday dishware does— then this blog is just for you. 

Maybe this is the first year you have considered dedicating a space to packing those once-a-year items away. After all, these are dishes you probably use only a few days out of the year.

If you’ve got a whole set of seasonal dishware items that you rotate each year per holiday or china tea cups/crystal glasses you only use for Christmas, those items are taking up a ton of space all year round. 

Not only does properly storing your seasonal dishware make them last longer and ensure they are well taken care of, but unpacking them when the holiday season comes brings a joy all its own.

Kitchen storage is important, because each of us have to live in the space we’re in — whether that means we live in a 3000 square foot home or a 300 square foot one. No matter how much space you are working with, we have included fantastic tips and tricks to storing your seasonal dishware in ways that just make sense.

Creating ‘Holiday’ Space In Your House

Have you ever heard of a “metro Shelf”? Metro shelves are industrial looking metal shelves that are often found in commercial kitchens. Metro shelves are also a popular storage solution for homes that have room for them. 

Since metro shelves have a more industrial look to them, we recommend utilizing a metro shelf in your basement or your laundry room; places where it won’t be seen by guests. The metro shelf can be your dedicated holiday station where you can utilize even more kitchen storage. 

Consider organizing a metro shelf with your festive holiday dishware, but also other things that you know you’ll use for the season. Consider things like your Christmas candles, specific napkins that you only use with the correlated dish sets you’re storing, and whatever else you’ll use during that time hosting wise.

This ensures everything stays in one place. It can be a bummer to find the candles and other decorating elements you forgot about after the season has passed. 

Kitchen Storage Ideas for Fine China

In a perfect world, we would all have the space in our homes for a China hutch. Said China hutch would elegantly display all of our China year round, being a point of pride in the dining room.

However, we all now this isn’t the case. Finding the right kitchen storage solution for fine China, especially seasonal China, can be challenging. If you don’t have a dedicated storage space in your kitchen, we recommend packing your delicate and fragile China in quilted dish bags.

The best storage option? Store your China in the boxes and packing they came in. But if you can’t do that, then quilted dish bags are your best bet. You will want to wrap each dish in a cloth napkin, bubble wrap, or even paper towels. And when you store your fragile China, make sure to never stack the dishes and cups on top of one another.

Stacking the dishes on top of one another almost guarantees that come next year, you will be opening a box of broken dishes. Instead, wrap the dishes and store them side by side in the box you’re using or the quilted dish bag.

Storing Wine Glasses and Champagne Flutes

Finding ample kitchen storage space for extra glassware can be tricky, to say the least. With open shelves becoming a hot trend in the last few years, people are getting creative with their glassware storage solutions. Most people don’t want to look at Christmas themed wine glasses all year. 

When it comes to storing delicate and fine glassware, we can’t sing the praises of quilted dish bags enough. Just as you would with your fine China, you’ll want to wrap your dishware in bubble wrap, cloth napkins, or paper towels. 

Label Your Kitchen Storage Bins and Bags

Finally, make sure you label your kitchen storage. This ensures that you don’t gloss over what is inside and forget to use your dishes. We especially recommend doing this if you intend on storing your seasonal dishware in a self storage facility. With so many other things being stored in your storage unit, it can be easy to completely miss the box you are looking for.

If you are storing your seasonal dishware in your storage unit, make sure not to stack the boxes on top of the box, and don’t stack your dishes on top of other boxes. Both can be a recipe for disaster. Things happen in storage units, and boxes can either shift and fall, or the bottom boxes can become crushed.