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Christmas, the Holidays, and DIY
How To Combine Holiday Festivities with Routine Home Maintenance
11/24/08
Learn how to combine Christmas, Hanukkah, Wiccan Yule, and other seasonal preparations with routine
DIY home maintenance projects such as gutter cleaning and painting.
Whether a DIY type person celebrates Christmas, Hanukkah, Wiccan Yule, Thanksgiving, or another Winter
holiday, that doesn’t mean those accumulating DIY projects have to fall by the wayside.
As a matter of fact, it’s an excellent opportunity to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone! Read
on to discover how to combine Christmas, the holidays, and DIY projects.
How exactly does this work? Think of it as kind of a spring cleaning thing. Think positively;
these are opportunities rather than chores. There are many small projects that have to be taken care of
on a periodic basis. For example...
Christmas Lights
Chances are, as the weather turns brisk (or leaning towards brutal), DIY people are thinking about
digging out the ladder and Christmas lights. As a matter of fact, this is a good time to think about
converting to LED Christmas lights both for the outside of the house and to spice up the Christmas tree.
LED Christmas lights
will pay for themselves quickly. Imagine, 70 lights per string and each string
only consumes a measly 4 Watts! Not only that, but they last 50,000 hours! That’s a lot of winter
holidays.
Clean the Rain Gutters, Touch Up Paint
The leaves have fallen and the ladder is leaning against the house, ready for the annual Christmas light
stringing. Isn’t this a great opportunity to clean the rain gutters? And if a real spirit of enthusiasm
strikes, how about installing rain gutter guards or gutter covers?
Another DIY maintenance project that comes to mind is touching up the fascia boards. This is a
golden opportunity to chip, prime, and do a bit of
exterior house painting.
Hanging the Mistletoe
Everyone loves to hang the mistletoe to encourage those sneaky kisses. While taking care of this
preparation, why not examine the door trim or case opening trim? It could also use a bit of touch up
painting or at least a bit of a scrub.
Mistletoe trivia: The word mistletoe comes from the Anglo-Saxon words,
“mistel” (dung) and “tan” (twig). Hmmm, bring on the eggnog.
Another spot to examine while in the area is the wall surrounding the light switch cover plates.
They’re usually located right next to the trim for convenience. This area tends to get a bit smudgy over
time because of walking by and flipping the lights on off. Once again, scrub, scrub.
Is the toggle getting too wiggly? Take time out to
replace the electric light switch.
A DIY Menorah?
Why not? Any woodworker who observes Hanukkah by lighting the menorah candles is capable of designing
and building a unique menorah that will become a family heirloom. What could be better than that? Of course,
deciding which sibling inherits it might be a bit of a problem.
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