Enjoying Outdoor Christmas Lighting

If you're the type of person who enjoys putting up a lot of outdoor Christmas lights, then you have probably experienced the mysterious phenomenon of the lights you used last year suddenly not working when you unpack them.  I honestly do not know why or how this happens.  In previous years, I have spent a lot of time carefully putting the holiday lights away without damaging them and then storing them in a safe dry place, only to find the next year at 1/4 to 1/2 them no longer work.  For me, this is a mystery on par with where the matching socks go during the time between washing machine and folding laundry.


There are many kinds of outdoor string lights sold for decorating at the holidays.  At one time or another, I have probably owned most of them.  My personal preference is for simple multicolored string lights in smaller sizes and multiple quantities.  On occasion I have also used outdoor flood lights with red and green and white light bulbs in them to highlight doorways or a manger scene.

Depending on when you are reading this, your options for finding good values on Christmas lights may be limited.  As any experience shopper knows, one of the best ways to save money is to purchase items that are out of season.  I'm trying to make sure that every year I go out after the Christmas holiday and look for deals on outdoor Christmas lights, as retailers make their push to clear the shelves to make room for Valentine's Day merchandise.  Using this strategy, it is not uncommon to be able to stock up at prices that sometimes are more than 50% off of regular retail.

Another thing I like to do to save money on outdoor lighting, is to keep my eyes open during the summer months.  I enjoy going to garage sales and estate sales whenever I can during the warmer months of the year.  You can often find really inexpensive outdoor Christmas string lights at the sales that are almost being given away.  In fact, sometimes people do actually give them away when they are getting ready to pack up their remaining items at the end of the Sale.  (Note:  Test them before you buy them!)

Obviously shopping at yard sales puts a limit on your selection.  The strategy of shopping at times other than right before Christmas can still help you if you have your mind set on one particular type of outdoor Christmas lights.  These are easily found on web sites devoted to outdoor lighting or even on eBay.  With such a huge variety of lights available at low prices, you should be able to put together quite an impressive outdoor lights display.  As always, follow the recommendations of the manufacturer and light safely.  Don't overload outlets and update your electrical service to keep things as safe as possible.

By the way, just an interesting note for you.  I learned a couple of years ago that some squirrels seem to enjoy chewing the wires of Christmas lights.  I have no idea what they were trying to do, but we had squirrels chew through our storage boxes and proceed to demolish about ten of the long, multi-function strings we had put away in storage.  We had used cardboard boxes, which turned out to be a mistake.  If you are going to store lights, get some heavy duty plastic bins.  That seemed to do the trick for us.

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