The display that gives you trouble in November was usually decided back in January, when it came down. Lights that get yanked off in a hurry, balled up, and shoved into whatever box was closest tend to come back out tangled, with connections stressed and bulbs loose in their sockets.
None of that shows up until you plug in next season and find the same section dark again. Takedown and storage are the unglamorous half of the job, and they are also the half that decides how easy next year is.
Take it down in order, not all at once
It is tempting to pull an entire display down as fast as possible once the season is over. Working in the reverse order it went up, one run or one section at a time, is worth the extra few minutes.
You get a clear look at each clip and connection as it comes off, rather than a pile of tangled strands on the ground to sort out afterward, and you are far less likely to end up with two runs twisted together in a way that damages a connector when you try to separate them.
Label every run as it comes down
A strand looks identical to every other strand once it is coiled up. A short piece of tape or a tag noting where it came from (front roofline, garage gable, porch rail) and roughly how long it is turns next year’s install from a guessing game back into a straightforward job.
This matters more the bigger or more varied the display is: a single ranch roofline probably does not need it, but a home with several distinct rooflines, a porch, and a couple of trees benefits from it every time.
Use reels, not a ball
How a strand is wound for storage has a direct effect on whether it works next year. Loosely balling up a strand and stuffing it in a tote puts sharp bends and pressure on the wire at random points, and repeated seasons of that eventually crack insulation or stress a connector until it fails.
Winding each run around a reel, a length of scrap cardboard, or in loose, even loops is a small habit that meaningfully cuts down on the tangling and pinched-wire faults that turn up as “mystery” dead sections the following year.
Where you store them matters as much as how
Heat is hard on Christmas lights in ways that are easy to overlook during a January takedown, when the last thing on anyone’s mind is summer. St. George’s average July high runs 101.9°F, per NOAA’s 1991-2020 climate normal, and an attic or an unshaded garage can sit noticeably hotter than that outside air for months at a stretch.
Sustained heat like that is hard on bulb seals, plug connectors, and the insulation jacketing the wire itself, and it adds up season over season even if no single summer causes an obvious failure. A closet, a basement, or an interior storage room that does not see those swings is a better home for a season’s worth of lights than the attic or the garage rafters most people default to.
A quick order to work through on takedown day
None of this needs to be complicated, and it does not add much time to a takedown that was already going to happen. Working through it in roughly this order keeps the whole job simple:
- Take each run down separately, in the reverse order it went up.
- Tag it before it goes anywhere near a bin: which roofline, which run, roughly how long.
- Wind it onto a reel or a firm form as you go, rather than setting it aside to deal with later.
- Set the bin somewhere that stays dry and does not bake over the summer, not the first open shelf in the garage.
Doing it in that order, section by section, also means you are looking closely at each run one more time before it goes away for the year, which is a natural point to notice a loose connector or a clip that is starting to wear before it becomes next season’s mystery fault.
The payoff is next November, not this January
None of this changes how the display looks this year. It changes how much of next year’s install is “hang the lights” versus “find and fix what broke in storage.”
A display that comes down in order, gets labeled, gets wound properly, and gets stored somewhere temperate is a display that mostly just works when it comes back out.
If a section already showed problems this season, working through the causes now, while it is still fresh and accessible, beats trying to remember it next November. See our Christmas light troubleshooting guide for the common failure points to check before you put everything away.
And if takedown, storage, and the January logistics are not something you want to own yourself, Glow Forward’s repair and maintenance service includes takedown and storage as part of the package.
Written by Michael Preston, Glow Forward Holiday Lighting. More from the blog