I discovered 3/4 of my Xmas lights are broken...
I discovered 3/4 of my Xmas lights are broken...
Some of the casings around the lights just shattered while I was in stringing them.... by the time I threw the 5th strand in the garbage bag, it was almost comical.
Pro tip: Starting in mid summer, take each string of lights and stretch it out, hang it across a backyard or along a hall or even just put it up around a room. Let the summer heat, soften the plastic and when you take it down and pack it up after the kinks and coils have loosened, carefully coil it in loops that are 12 to 14 inches across. Tie off with cable ties or pieces of ribbon and lay the coils flat in a box. When you go to use them later, you can hang the coil off an arm and just carefully spool the string out as you go. That way, there's no spinning, unwinding ball of kinked and curled lights to deal with. Just nice loose coils.
Sause: Art director/decorator for a handful of stores with a background as an IA stagehand.. (..whose specialty was working with lighting directors..)