Today’s high was close to 70 F so it seemed like the perfect time to take down my Christmas lights.  I’m sure there are those who think this was too late, but it’s been in the lower 40s so I’m fine with being a few days late.  Now, I prefer the lights to be quite a bit tangled (see pictures), so this doesn’t go as smoothly as it would if I put them up in neat lines along the gutter.  As much as I like the lights tangled on the house, I don’t like getting them out of the boxes in December and having to untangle them before putting them up.  I’ve tried just putting them up tangled the way they came out of the box, but that just didn’t work!  Anyway, in my younger days I was all about the Christmas light storage reels that come in red and green bags.  Like this one.

And those are great.  But ain’t nobody got time for that.  They only really work well with mini-lights, and even then I’d find that half of my light strands had gone bad in storage every year.  I think it’s because you have to pull on the wires in order to wind the strands tightly enough to fit in the storage bags.  Those reels also end up taking up a lot more space than my new, super-lazy method.

Everyone has that crazy bag of bags in their house, right?  Have you gotten in a fight with someone when he threw out your bag of bags?  No?  Oh, yeah . . .  Neither have I . . . Nothing to see here . . .       Anyway, I just put each strand in its own plastic grocery bag and then throw all the bags in a Sterilite tote.  This method may seem not-so-great but I’ve done it for a couple years and I’ll never go back to the light reels.  Each strand is in its own bag so you don’t get the strands tangled together and you can really compress these bags into a lot less space than you would with other storage methods.

And since I brought up the bag of bags, I know a lot of people let that bag of bags get out of control.  Like they’ll have a closet full of old grocery bags that never get used.  Not to point any fingers or anything.  Anyway, here are some thoughts on ways to actually use them:

1. Do you have a dog?  These make great pick-up bags.  I know that doesn’t sound exactly groundbreaking for a lot of people, but I definitely know people with giant piles of these bags who still buy those rolls of pick-up bags.  Maybe it’s because the bags are kind of inconvenient to carry around.  This blog post shows you a way to fold them up so they don’t take up so much room.  Once I started folding them up I started stashing extras in the car and at the office.  Super convenient.
2. This whole post on how I store my Christmas lights.  You know.  Like on this page where I’ve been typing.
3. I know I’m not the only one who uses these as trash bags.  They’re small enough that they never get too heavy and they encourage you to take the trash out more regularly since they fill up so quickly.  They’re already easy to use that way, but for a tidier look than hanging a bag on your doorknob (hi, Mom!) I love this trash can.  It not only holds the bag you’re currently using, but also stores several bags at a time so that you don’t need to go searching for a new bag when you take the first one out.

 

Oh, and to update on the 40 bags in 40 days thing: I went through my night stands and that only gave me 1 new bag.  I did remember that in addition to the bags I threw out from the master bath I also gave my mom two bags of cleaning supplies that I can’t use anymore due to my asthma.  And today when I went to the attic to get the tubs for the Christmas lights I got rid of the contents of a 105-quart tub.

 

 

 

 

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