The “No Christmas Tree” Christmas Tree: Shelves, Tinsel, and Love Seal The Deal

Many city dwellers and those of us who simply live in small or cramped spaces don’t have the room for that ten foot spruce a la “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” Oftentimes, we find ourselves shifting everything in the living room just to fit in a sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and that doesn’t exactly make us feel great or bountiful about the holiday season. So let’s get out of the box entirely and do something that is fun and functional: a tree on the wall!

Now, before you go putting on your judgey pants, we’re not talking about stapling silver tinsel in a zig-zag formation a la college dorm room… though, if that’s your thing, we’re not bagging on you. What we’re talking about is a little more sophisticated, and can be made to use when the holidays are over by applying shelves. So here’s the idea:

Get a cool, standout, fun wall decal of a Christmas tree. You can find some pretty cool ones just by Googling, but StyleHive has some great picks, like the one featured on this blog, and of course, if you go to Pinterest, you will probably come out with a tree decal idea for every room of your house.

But here’s where the YOUHANGIT idea takes a different tack: Add evergreen, spruce, or Douglas fir colored shelves, or even raw wood colored shelves. When you use a quality wall decal that is removable and repositionable, you can actually use the YOUHANGIT wall hanging system to make the marks for the shelves right on the decal itself rather than the wall.

The purpose of these shelves is sort of double or triple fold. For one, you can use it to place standalone family ornaments that you would typically have hung on a traditional tree—simply give them a little tinsel nest on the shelf if they have rounded bottoms, and they’ll stay in place. Next, you can also use the shelves to place small gifts, and you can use lower shelves to add small hooks where you can even hang stockings in the event that your tight living space doesn’t have a mantel.

What’s great about hanging decorative shelves is that you can leave them there after you take down the decal if they serve a year round purpose for you, or if not, simply take them down and cover the holes with a light putty, and you can reuse them again next year. For this reason, we recommend that you use small shelves meant more for decor than for handling super heavy loads.

Once you have your wall decal, shelves, ornaments and token gifts up and around on the shelves, you'll really be surprised at how "Christmasy" it really feels, even without that enormous tree taking up three-fourths of the house. But there is one thing missing: that smell of spruce. That's a quick fix with a trip to Our Own Candle Company, which makes the best mason jar candles for the holiday in Christmas tree smell you've ever laid nostrils on. Oula!