The Guiness World Record for the “Most Holiday Lights” belongs to David Richards in Canberra, Australia. His display has almost 1.2 million LED lights strung on 75 miles of cable. The most lights on a residential property is 601,736 lights held by Tim and Grace Gay in LaGrangeville, New York. Their display spans two acres and takes two months for their entire family to rebuild each year. Most of us don’t come close to having this amount of lights, but many of us do amass our own large holiday collections. It can be a lot of work to drag out all the boxes and hang the lights and decorations. Then, when the festivities are over, taking them down and putting them away can cause your own post-holiday headache.
Famously, the same strings of lights you carefully put away one year become a tangled mess when you take them out the next year. You spend hours trying to unsnarl them and replace burned out bulbs. Along with the lights are the other decorations and ornaments. You discover that some of them have broken and some are tattered and worn, so you buy new ones, but you can’t part with the old ones because of their sentimental value. Later, you decide you want a certain color or theme for your decorations and you buy even more. The collection grows and so does the space needed to store it.
Families with children know all about this accumulation of adornment for Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. It starts small with a special ornament to commemorate the birth of the first child. It balloons from there – holiday art projects from school, Homemade Cards, Wreaths, Candles, Menorahs, Kinaras, Stockings, Nutcrackers, Nativity Scenes, Trains that wind around the tree and Miniature Villages in fake snow. There may be an artificial tree or two or three. And, let’s not forget the outdoor lighted reindeers, the inflatable ten-foot snowman, and the oversized candy canes that line the driveway. Their boxes are tucked away in attics, garages, closets and storage units. They start spilling into other things. Soon it spirals out of control.
If you have boxes of decorations and old lights that stack to the ceiling and take up a whole room or most of your garage, you probably have too many. Are there boxes that you haven’t opened in years? You can start with examining whether or not you need to keep those. Are there broken or damaged lights or frayed wires or cords? Do you want to replace your old lights with more efficient LEDs? Don’t throw them away. Recycle them. Did you know you can send your old lights for recycling to: https://www.holidayleds.com/christmas-light-recycling-program.aspx? They will gladly take your old lights and send you a 15% off coupon for LED lights from their website.
If the thought of it all is just too much to cope with and you don’t know where to start in taming the mess, you can always call The Move Makers for help. Our team of professional organizers will gladly assist you in getting things under control. Take some of the stress out of your holiday and avoid the post-holiday clean-up headache by calling The Move Makers.