Dealing with holiday lights is a chore that can be dangerous and time consuming. Here are ten tips to make your decorating easier and safer.
Timing. I know that it is going to snow or be cold with sleety rain on the Sunday after Thanksgiving because that's when we usually try to put the lights up outside our home. If you schedule putting up your lights early and the weather is bad, you can always put it off until it warms up. Put it off until the afternoon before your party and you'll be out there in the snow and rain.
Don't Tase Me Bro. Don't put up outside lights with an extension cord that is designed for interior use only. As your electric bill will tell you, older non-LED lights use a lot of power. That thin cord will heat up and is an accident waiting to happen. If you have an older home that does not have ground fault interrupter (GFI) equipped exterior outlets, consider purchasing an extension cord with a GFI built in. If the lights get wet, short out or even too hot, the cord will stop the flow of electricity before someone gets hurt. If you have a lot of lights that you put up, don't run all of them back to the same outlet even if it means a longer cord. If you do have to use a long cord, the thicker the better. The designation of thickness or gauge for electrical wires is reversed in that the lower the gauge, the thicker the wire.
Step Ladder Safety. Step ladders are not designed to let you stand on the absolute top. If you can't reach something while your knees are below the top of the ladder, buy or borrow a longer ladder. Make sure the cross brace on the ladder is fully extended and locked into place before going up. Set up the step ladder so that the legs are fairly level and on solid ground. A few scraps of lumber can come in handy.
Extension Ladder Safety. Extension ladders should be placed with the distance off the wall for the base a quarter of the working length of the ladder. This will be roughly 30 degrees off your house. Don't climb higher than the last three rungs and keep one hand and two feet on the ladder once you have reached your working height. Make sure the extension locks are engaged and that the base of the ladder is well anchored before climbing. The legs need to be level and on solid ground too.
Simple Tools. When putting lights up in an outdoor tree, you may be able to avoid climbing a ladder by making a simple tool. Wrap and tape a coat hanger to the top of a broom handle with the hook part sticking out horizontally. Use the hook to lift the strand of lights into place. If you have an old curtain rod that is longer than your broomstick or something like the pole from a pool skimmer, you'll be able to go up even higher.
Plan Ahead. We wrap our porch posts in the same garlands and lights every year. After three years of taking them apart and putting them back together it dawned on me to keep them wrapped around each other and store them ready to go back up. When we repainted the house on year five, I finally replaced the rusting nails that had gone in our first winter with stainless steel screws. Now we simply hang the assembly from the screw at the top of each post and wrap. Our porch isn't very high and the kids have fun running around the posts jumping on and off the porch to create a nice spiral.
What Comes Up, Must Come Down. Usually we have plenty of help from the kids putting up our lights. If I were cynical, I would think that it has something to do with Santa's list, but I think it is more about the excitement over the approaching holiday. Pulling the boxes out of the attic and detangling all the strings goes quickly with many hands. When we get into January everyone disappears and usually I'm tossing everything into the boxes on my own. Discuss the takedown with your helpers while you're putting everything up. Make a fun event of it and if needed there is always bribery. Hot chocolate when everything is put away works pretty well for us.
Storage. Over the years, our decorations have become old friends. Our kids are still mourning ornaments and decorations that were lost when cardboard boxes have gotten crunched. After we lost our homemade angel to a basement flood, we switched to plastic storage bins. The green and red ones usually go on sale in January and their color makes them easy to find the next year. Storing all your holiday supplies in one spot helps too.
Storing Lights. We have a few strings of lights that came wrapped around cylinders which we kept and simply wind back up as they come down. Unfortunately, a lot of our lights came in cardboard boxes with little tabs to hold the wires in place and are simply not reusable. As your taking the strings off, coil each one separately and use twist ties to keep them coiled. Then store each strand in a plastic grocery bag. Freezer size ziplocks work great too.
Presort. Sort your decorations into categories. We use Outside Lights, Outside Decorations, Tree Ornaments, Tree Lights/Garlands, Wrapping and Other. Buy enough bins to store all the decorations you have in each category. The next year when you're setting up everything is already sorted, things will go a lot smoother and you'll have more time to enjoy the holidays.