Easily Store Christmas Lights and Christmas Beads In a Recyclable Plastic Bottle

Hi, you're watching VisiHow and today as part of our Christmas and holiday series, we're going to show you how you can easily put away things like Christmas beads and Christmas lights from the Christmas tree.

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   We're going to start with the Christmas beads. Let's move the rest of the stuff out of the way for now.

   

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2. 2
   Get an empty plastic milk bottle, coke bottle, or other kind of plastic bottle with a cap. What we're going to do is, you've finished using this bottle, you're going to wash it, then you're going to set it upside down in your dish rack to dry. When it's dry you've got the bottle and the lid, both of which are clean.

   

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3. 3
   All you have to do then is string the Christmas beads into the bottle. This also works for things like treated popcorn, if you're hanging treated popcorn around your tree.

   

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4. 4
   Now we've got beads in a bottle!

   

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5. 5
   Next year when I want to take these beads out, I just take them out of the bottle. I can actually hang them around the tree, pulling them out of the bottle as I go. Pretty handy!

   

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6. 6
   Next I'll show you a great trick for Christmas lights. Get an empty water bottle - if you're using a water bottle, you don't need to rinse it out, but do dry it. You notice I used plastic before, and I use plastic here. The reason for this is that plastic is a material that a little mouse or any other pest would chew up. If you use other things like empty paper towel roll, which many people like to use to wrap their lights around, a mouse might find that to be a very cozy little place for a nest. It can chew through your wires, and then you don't have Christmas lights anymore. This way, we take a plastic bottle - the mouse is not interested in that.

   

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   Take the lights - you can either use the plug end or the end that has the actual input. It's up to you which end you use. Personally, I go by the order that I'll use the lights on. The first thing to go on the tree should be the last thing that goes on the bottle.

   

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8. 8
   You want a bottle that has some grooves in it, which gives us something to hold on to. These lights are going to sit in the grooves, and they're not going to slide off. You don't have to pay attention to that, it's automatically going to work.

   

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9. 9
   You take the end and put it near the middle of the bottle, and you just start wrapping the lights around the bottle. You do want to make sure that they're not tangled up. Once you get it a little bit in, you can let go of the starting piece and it will get wrapped around just like everything else.

   

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10. 10
    By wrapping the lights like this, another great thing you'll be able to do later, is hold this small, easy to use bottle in your hand and unwrap them as you put them around the tree. No longer will you have to lay out strings of messed up lights, and figure out which light goes where, because they'll all be self contained on these little bottles.

    

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    Once you get to the end, you just go up to the top of the bottle, use your finger to make a loop, slide the end through the loop, and pull it closed.

    

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    Now that it's all tied up, and you shake it or tap it, it won't come off. It's not something that's just going to randomly fly off. It's great - you can take this whole bottle now and you can just toss it in a box. Next year when it's time to put the lights up, you just take out this bottle and just set it on the side. You don't have to play with coiling the lights around, or doing anything else. Best of all, when you're done you don't need this bottle anymore - just recycle it.

    

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    Have a great new year, and thanks for watching VisiHow. Hopefully you'll be able to make use of this trick. Let us know in the comments if you have your own suggestions. We look forward to hearing them!

    

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If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.

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