How to store Christmas lights without getting them tangled

The method, in five steps

1. Unplug and let it come to temperature if you can. A strand below freezing is stiff and the insulation is at its most brittle. If you have the choice, take lights down on a milder day; if you do not, handle them gently and do not force a tight bend.
2. Hang the reel at the point the strand leaves the house. This is the whole trick. A reel clipped to the gutter or hooked over a ladder rung means the strand goes from the roofline onto the reel without ever touching the ground.
3. Wind under light tension, one clip at a time. Release a clip, take up the slack, wind. The strand should never have slack pooling below you, because slack is what loops back on itself.
4. Secure the free end. A twist tie or a piece of tape through the reel. An unsecured end unwinds three turns in the box and that is where next year’s tangle starts.
5. Label the reel with where the strand goes. Not “lights” — “front eave, 60 ft, C9 warm white.” Next November you are reading labels in a cold garage, not solving a puzzle.

The free alternatives, honestly assessed

You do not have to buy a reel. Three common alternatives, and where each stops working:

• Cardboard rectangle. Cut notches in both ends of a piece of stiff cardboard and wind the strand around it. Genuinely works for mini strings. Fails on C9, where the bulbs will not lie flat against a flat surface, and fails over time as the cardboard softens.
• Coat hanger. Bend a wire hanger into a rough spool and wind around it. Works, holds less than you expect, and puts a tight bend at the hook end that is hard on the wire.
• Original box. Fine for exactly one strand per box, in the original tray. The moment two strands share a box, they braid.

All three work better than a heap in a tote, and all three share the same principle as a reel: keep the turns adjacent and never let two strands share a space unmanaged.

C9 and heavy strands need different handling

A commercial C9 run on an 18 AWG stringer is thick, stiff and heavy, and it is hard on a plastic spool — the wheel flexes and the strand comes off oval. Use a metal reel, use a wider one if you can, and wind more loosely than you would a mini string. A wide bend radius matters much more here than packing density.

The same goes for extension cords, which in freezing weather are the stiffest thing you will handle all day.

Where the reels then live

Off the floor, out of direct heat, and somewhere the temperature does not swing violently. An attic that runs from below freezing to over a hundred degrees is hard on PVC insulation over five or six seasons, and brittle insulation is how a working strand becomes a strand you should not plug in.

Reels stack badly on their own, so put them in a rigid tote or the case they came in — see bins vs bags vs totes for what belongs in which container.

Test before you store, not before you hang

Plug each strand in for a minute before it goes on the reel. Finding a dead section in January costs you nothing except a label saying so; finding it in November, on a ladder, with the strand already half-hung, costs you the afternoon. Mark the reel and either fix it in the spring or replace the set before the season.