3/10

Make Better Holiday Light Clips

Hanging outdoor holiday lights means finding a way to fasten the strands to your house. Create your own inexpensive and long-lasting holiday light clips with a staple used for electrical cable wiring.

Just snip the staple in half and fasten it to your fascia or trim with the remaining nail. It will hold the wire securely while making it easy to slip it behind the clip.

The best part? These clips hold up year after year. If you have metal fascia, use stainless steel screws so they won’t rust.

4/10

Hang Holiday Lights from Gutters

Gutters also happen to be great for hanging holiday lights, and you can do it without a ladder in some cases. You’ll need an 8-ft. 1×2 board or something similar, a strong magnet and some galvanized steel plumber’s hanger strap.

Cut the hanger strap into 7-in. sections, bend the sections into hooks and attach the hooks to the string of lights every five feet or so. Next, attach the magnet to the 1×2 with a screw and hang the hooks on the gutter one at a time.

This is more difficult on a two-story house. You’ll have to screw two or three 1x2s together to reach the gutters, and ‘grabbing’ the hooks with the magnet as they hang far above you is trickier.

5/10

Test the Christmas Light Bulbs

Do yourself a favor and pick up an inexpensive light tester.

After you unpack the lights (and before you hang them up), plug them in to see if the strand works. If only half or none of it lights up, you may have a bad bulb. In that case, you can quickly identify the problem with the light tester. It’ll save you a lot of time compared with going bulb by bulb through the strand.