When it is time to decorate with holiday lights for Christmas or other holidays, nothing can be more frustrating than needing to untangle a web of light strings before you can begin. When this happens, the problem, of course, usually originated at the end of the previous holiday lighting season when the lights were taken down and put away.

Here are a few tips to make your life much easier next lighting season:

1) Check light strings for broken or faulty bulbs at the end of the season, when they’re still stretched out. Just plug them in and look for dead bulbs. If you find occasional non-working bulbs, try wiggling and twisting them slightly to get them working again. If this doesn’t do the trick, put a short piece of tape on the wire next to each dead bulb to identify its location. Then unplug the light strings and replace faulty or missing bulbs.

2) If entire lengths of light strings are not working, the problem is with a fuse or wire. For more about this, see Repairing Christmas Lights. If you can’t repair your light strings, give them to charity.

3) Don’t just coil up the light strings and stuff them back into their original box. Wind them. For indoor lights, you can make a simple winder by cutting a V-shaped slot into opposite sides of an 8-by-10-inch piece of cardboard. Just wind one string per cardboard winder. For outdoor lights, you can use a commercial plastic winder that is made for the purpose or—for really long strings—a small garden hose reel.

4) Be careful with light strings. They are not very durable. It doesn’t take much to render them unworkable. Take care not to break or loosen bulbs or break wires as you wind them.