…all the decorations are being taken down!
Really? When do you take your decorations down? I hope not today. I’d love to keep mine up forever but my daughter’s birthday is January 5th. At least it gives me a good cut off date.
Anyway, I just wanted to share my very favorite AFTER Christmas tip with you. Are you ready? I can feel the excitement. Here we go…
See, I have this friend of a friend of the family (you know, the guy you duck when you see him at the store because you don’t really know him and you don’t really want to have a conversation about your family). Anyway, he used to (I don’t know if he still does) goes all out for Christmas. His Christmas tree was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. He wraps EVERY SINGLE branch with lights. It was brilliant.
And he showed us the secret to storing Christmas lights.
All you do is start with one end of the strand. Put the first light at the bottom of your palm and pull the 2nd light to the top (vertical across your palm). The, while you are pinching/holding the 2nd bulb, pull the 3rd bulb down the the 1st. Like so…
Then keep matching the odd and even bulbs.
Eventually, it will look like this.
Then once you get them all in your tight little fist…
Just wrap the remaining cord around and plug it back in!
Now isn’t that better than my husband’s wrap job?
And it only takes about a minute a strand–it’s way easy! But even better is next Christmas when you dust off your boxes full of decor, your little strands of lights will be ready to go! You just hold it in your hand and wrap it right around the tree. No de-tangling, no pulling them across the floor, just easy tree lighting!
There you go. Pretty cool, huh?
Merry TakingChristmasDecorationsDown!
***this was at least partially originally posted on January 2, 2008***
Pre-lit all the way!!
BTW, I know who you’re talking about!! Have you ever really run into him in the grocery store?!
wow! that looks just like how they come in the box! I’m totally trying that out this year. Mine have to stay up till Sunday at least since that’s when our extended fam comes over.
thanks!
Great tip… it’s one I do! ;o) My Uncle taught me how to do that. It makes packing everything up a lot easier, as well.
By the way… it’s 1:35pm on the 26th, here and my decorations are ALL down & put away! No sign of Christmas, except I haven’t vacuumed yet. All the toys are put away, too. Whew! Tough job it was!
That does look easy, but you know what’s even easier. A pre-lit tree. haha
we took our tree down today, i hated to do it, but it was a fire hazard since it unfortunately stopped drinking water and died. also, i wrapped up the lights before I saw your handy light folding, bummer, i am tempted to take them out and redo them.
Great idea! I’ll do it for sure (yours, not hubby’s).
My decor was down that night! I know…im horrible, but I wanted a clean house!
I have had a pre-lit tree for the last several years, until this year when we went to put up the tree and half of it would not light. I was sooooo frustrated. Thank God my husband patiently volunteered to go out and buy Christmas lights. So this organizational tip on putting away Christmas lights was very helpful – THANKS!
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Dawn
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I told HH about twenty times “You need to go look at Oh Amanda and find out how to put away the lights.” Of course he didn’t…