Grandiose Spending

[Aerides]

I could see finding a service to hang my outside lights when a ladder starts to get worrisome. My home is one story, but even a fall from a few steps up would wreck the holidays. I really like having the lights up outside, so, yeah, I'd shop around but would do this.

And for a working family who has the dough in their budget? Saving 8 hours of work when you only have the weekends free as it is, in the middle of everything else do do for the holidays...might be a good idea, especially in areas where it's 8 hours out in the cold.

Oh and it's never as much fun taking them down. So, if that was part of the deal then it sounds a bit better!

 

[Chuckanut]

We routinely get flyers from healthy young college age folk who offer to put up and take down Christmas lights for a reasonable price.

Having seen many of my elders fall, break something and then never get back to anything close to their pre-fall health, I think it's a very justifiable expense.

 

[brett]

If the choice was binary..no lights or paying $1200-1500 to set them up (how about taking them down?) my house would be DARK! We can easily afford the expense however the expense has absolutely no value to us hence it would be a big no thanks.

Nor would I get on a ladder to string them up. Those days are over. They either get put on the low bushes or or the railings. Twenty minutes to put them up, 5 minutes to put them away. Done deal. A small display saves us from showing up our neighbours!

 

[aja8888]

@76 years old, we are down to a wreath on the front door and a 4' pre-decorated tree we keep in a spare closet that we pull out during the holidays. No more ladders or outside lights.

 

[rodi]

It takes us less than an hour to string up the lights along the 1st story roof line. We don't do the 2nd story roof - but even that wouldn't require a ladder, since you could climb out a window and reach up to to do it...

One of the reasons it goes so fast is we leave the hooks up year round - painted to match the eaves. We have a built in bench that runs along our porch - so you can reach the hooks standing on the bench. The only place we need the ladder is the peak of the garage... and it only involves two positions to reach the parts that can't be reached from the ground. (That is helped by my 6'4" husband and 6'4" sons.)

No way I would pay huge $$ for a service... I like lights - but not enough to pay a recurring fee that is more than my monthly grocery budget.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

We're trying to simplify all the holiday decorations. I got rid of the big Christmas tree years ago and replaced it with some table top ones and fairy lights around the fireplace. Outside we usually have something simple like white fairy solar lights, wreaths and bows. Some of our neighbors literally have storage lockers for all the Christmas decorations and it takes them days if not weeks to put up and take everything down.

We also stopped doing the ladder stuff for outside lights, starting with Halloween this year. For our last Halloween I just had assorted LED light decorations and string lights we put in the windows, draped in the bushes or placed on the porch along with cobwebs, assorted spiders, bats, etc. and it looked cute without too much effort. I'm trying to not have more than will fit in a box or two for each holiday but I think Halloween is back up to three boxes because of the fake gravestones and a big light up full moon taking up space.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Sounds like you should buy a 20-foot tree next year, just to mess with your neighbors:

 

[racy]

I hang 2 non-lighted wreaths on our Mission style pillars and call it 'good'. Could give a sh*t what the neighbors do!

 

[Gumby]

We put a single white candle in each of the front windows and a holly or boxwood wreath on the front door of our 1857 Greek Revival style house. Most of our neighbors do about the same.

 

[Aus_E_Expat]

I admire whoever came up with the idea of providing this "service" for $1200. Obviously they saw a niche that that no one else thought existed and found some gullible people willing to pay exorbitant fees.

We have no lights outside our house and neither does anyone else in our street - no pressure to keep up with the Jones.

 

[lemming]

I don't do anything but if I did it would be lawn reindeer . White lights and maybe moving parts.
Those inflatable snowmen and santas always look so sad. They deflate every day so you walk past them when they look battle scarred or just depressed. No joy in them at all.

 

[Bir48die]

Along with cleaning gutters I've spent plenty of time on the roof doing lights. Ratcheting it down each year to more low level lights. Heights continually giving me the heebie jeebies more and more

 

[Souschef]

WE have 2 10 foot strings of tulip shaped "summer lights" across our porch. For Xmas I use the same support rod to hang LED icicles.
We have a nice 8 foot prelighted tree. We have not put it up in a number of years. We have a little fiber optic tree that sits on top of our electric fireplace.

 

[jollystomper]

To the OP, I wonder if you neighbor gets a "kickback"/bonus for referring new customers to that business...

My principle for hanging Christmas light is they do not go any higher than I can reach on a step ladder. We put some across our porch and the hedges in front of the house. Then we use a couple of those projector light displays. It takes a couple of hours to put up and take down (this is done leisurely, usually during commercials for whatever football game I am watching ).

 

[MRG]

I'm glad our neighborhood doesn't do lights. Some folks put up decorative pieces but not lights. There's no lights for a few miles.

 

[aaronc879]

I have never done Christmas lights anyway but after 3 hip surgeries the surgeon said ladders are a no-go. If I were in the spend-down phase and had money to burn I would spend $1500 once a year no problem. Better than falling off a ladder and breaking something or worse.

 

[CRLLS]

We've made things simpler last year. Instead of spending hours getting our ~150ft of incandescent lights for the fences working each year, we spent that dough and bought LED's. Now all of our lights are LED's. In a couple of weeks, we get to see if the plan worked out.

I gave up roof line lights 15 years ago when we moved here. I don't do roof work ever since the ladder went down with me on it.

 

[Sunset]

Using an online calculator, I figure we save about $12 each year by having switched from regular old outdoor bulbs to LEDs.
The savings alone will pay for the LEDs in a few years.

 

[rk911]

I'm a practicing Christian but just don't get all the insanity that goes into Christmas lighting, especially when 99% of the stuff is made in a country that doesn't have a lot of religious freedom.

But.. given that people are buying lights and other decorations that go up on the roof, on trees that are a couple of stories high, etc. it does make sense to me to hire out the work. I'm a big DIY person but am very wary of high-ladder work especially since I live alone. The money saved is not worth the risk of a major injury from falling off a high ladder.

we don't do outside lights, lawn ornaments, etc. i put a small wreath on the front door and call it a day. thank God we don't live near the certifiably insane types who try to out do Clark Griswald. but riddle me this...just when did Halloween become a contender for first place in poor taste in outside decorations?

 

[audreyh1]

We don’t do seasonal exterior house decorations. Sure saves time and bother!

 

[Ronstar]

My only outside decorations are 2 red bows for my workshop. I think I may have about $8 invested.

 

[pb4uski]

We routinely get flyers from healthy young college age folk who offer to put up and take down Christmas lights for a reasonable price.

Having seen many of my elders fall, break something and then never get back to anything close to their pre-fall health, I think it's a very justifiable expense.

I totally agree, but my concern would be that the service provider is probably not insured so what happens if they fall and have an injury, especially if the injury disables them.... so I would want to go with a service provider that has insurance.

 

[GravitySucks]

Just paid a guy to fix the siding that blew off as I have adopted a strict No Ladder policy.
I do lights on the front porch landing, and splurge on a real tree. $1500 seems pretty high for a couple hours work.

 

[Aerides]

I totally agree, but my concern would be that the service provider is probably not insured so what happens if they fall and have an injury, especially if the injury disables them.... so I would want to go with a service provider that has insurance.

Yup this. Far too many people are just interested in the best price, but that is a false economy if someone ends up needing a claim on your property... licensed/insured or you're not getting the work from me.

 

[mrfeh]

Holiday lights? Not worth the time or money, IMO.