How to Keep Your Home Clean With a Real Christmas Tree, According to TikTok

So, you bought a real Christmas tree: your entire house is about to smell like pine, your Christmas spirit couldn’t be higher, and your divine connection to nature couldn’t be stronger. But there’s one issue—real Christmas trees are notoriously messy.

Maybe you have guests coming over, or maybe you just don’t want pine needles stuck in your cute, fluffy Christmas socks all month. Whatever your cleaning desire is, one thing is for sure: you’ll need to find ways to keep your natural Christmas tree from turning your home into one sticky, sappy, pine-needle-ridden disaster.

As usual, TikTok has us covered with the Christmas cleaning hacks we need.

First things first, before you even bring your tree inside your house, take the plastic fencing that occasionally comes wrapped around your tree off while you’re outside. Then, with the help of another person, shake the tree out. Really shake it hard to ensure that all of the loose pine needles get tossed to the ground. Remember, these trees grew to their great size in the wild, facing wind storms, blizzards, and more natural elements that made them shake and still keep their needles, so it will be able to withstand some shaking.

If you don’t have a friend to help you shake the tree out and have the ability to lift the tree on your own, you can grab it by the top of the tree and stomp it on its trunk a few times to knock out those old needles. One TikTok creator even used her leaf blower to remove loose needles, bugs, leaves, and other debris before taking the tree into her home. Get creative if you need to!

You’ll also want to keep the tree as healthy as possible. Once a tree dries out, the pine needles are bound to drop at a higher rate than if they’re fresh, happy, and