Christmas Lights: Proper Storage and Maintenance

Knowing how to correctly stow and maintain your Christmas lights ensures a beautiful, fully-illuminated Christmas display each holiday season. Storing and maintaining flawless Christmas light strands is a fairly easy task requiring a little time and care.

Storage First

Before you worry about maintaining your lights, you must purchase containers to stow the lights during the off-season. Purchase an adequate amount of shallow stackable heavy-plastic containers to account for all of your Christmas lights. It is important for these containers to be shallow so you suffer less bulb-breakage from stacking the lights too densely. Once you have purchased the proper storage receptacles, you can worry about your Christmas light maintenance.

The proper time to maintain your Christmas lights is right before you decide that it is time to hang your lights. Before pulling everything out, visit a store and purchase at least 25 replacement bulbs in an array of colors. When you get home, take turns plugging in each of your light-strands. If every light is illuminated, it does not need to be maintained. However, if you get a strand with dead light bulbs, simply replace the light bulb with an appropriate color.