How To Waste A Saturday – Beano’s Christmas Light Debacle Of 2012

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was supposed to be a nice, relaxing day to enjoy the beautiful weather and hang up my Christmas lights before the cold weather sinks its teeth into the Front Range again.

I had all the lights from our old house ready to go, a tall ladder in the garage, and a few hours of daylight to get the job done. However, after an hour of hanging off of my ladder, and trips to 9 different stores...I still have only two strands of lights on my house. What happened?

First of all, I'm not too fond of heights, so climbing a 16-foot ladder and attempting to line my awning with lights was an ordeal in its own right. But my ladder was too short, and my nerves too weak to scramble up my shingles. I had to go to plan B and change where I planned to put said lights.

Now, I moved to a new house this year, but when I have a box full of lights that more than covered my previous house I thought, "This should be plenty of lights." I was wrong. After the ladder fiasco I chose to try hanging my lights on the gutters and above the windows. But after 7-8 or trips up and down the ladder, I came to realize that I needed another 15 feet or so of lights.

Argh.

There was still an hour or so of light, I figured I had time to make a quick trip to the store and get home to hang the rest of the lights, so off in my car I went.

Now, the lights I already I had were 7 strands of G.E. LED crystallized icicle lights that I bought on clearance for $7 a box two years ago. I was stoked to find the exact same lights for sale under a sign that read $11.98 at my first stop. Score!

That feeling of accomplishment was quickly vanquished when I went to the register and found out the lights I wanted really cost $24....each! I'm the first to admit I'm a bit of a cheapskate, so $24 for nine-friggen'-feet of Christmas icicles was just crazy. So, I put them back and went on a mad hunt to save a few bucks.

Seven stops in three different cities and I could not find another store that even carried the same lights (Or anything that remotely looked like them). Nearly three hours had now passed, the sun was down, and I was not a very happy camper. So, I gave up. I drove home, pulled down the half-hung lights, put the ladder away and gave up on getting it done.

Fast forward to this morning, where I spent 20-unseccessful-minutes looking to buy my needed lights online and then made a stop at two more brick-and-mortar stores in desperation.

But it was to no avail, I ended up going back to the very first place I stopped and shelling out close to $50 for two more strands of holiday lights. (That’s more than I paid for all 7 strands I already had combined!)

Now I am out $50, and an entire wasted afternoon, but at least I have the lights I need.

Lesson learned? Being "frugal" doesn't always pay off.

Now, I just need a few hours of spare time and some decent weather to get the dang lights up.

‘Tis the season indeed.

Sometimes my own stubbornness and frugalness make more trouble that I’d like to admit.