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28 Handy Hints to Get You Through the Holidays

Jenny StanleyUpdated: Dec. 16, 2019

From decorating to cooking to organizing, the holidays can be overwhelming. Family Handyman is here to help with our favorite holiday hacks for your home.

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Food Containers for Ornament Storage

Food Containers for Ornament Storage

Empty egg cartons, drink carriers, plastic clamshell boxes from the bakery and other disposable grocery containers are excellent for storing holiday ornaments. They can be stacked neatly inside a larger bin and will keep your ornaments safe while in storage. Next, check out our 10 favorite Christmas tree species.

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Wreath hanging hack HH handy hint command hook

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Wreath Hanging Hack

Typically, we rely on everything from metal wreath holders to staples, nails and even thumbtacks to hang holiday wreaths on the door, yet each of these familiar methods causes leaves scars on the door. Skip those old methods and try a less damaging tactic by using removable plastic hooks. Place an upside-down Command Hook on the interior side of your door, loop your wreath’s ribbon (or some fishing line) around the hook and drape it over the front of the door. Find the perfect front door wreaths for every season.

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Peeling apples power tools

Peel Apples Super-Fast

Peeling apples is a breeze when you put a drill to it. Get your pies made quicker with the power of a drill to help peel. Check out how we peel apples with a drill.

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Lazy Susan Tree Stand for Wood Floors

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Lazy Susan Tree Stand for Wood Floors

Winding the lights around your Christmas tree can be a pain. Here's a great way to rotate the tree in its stand?without scratching up your hardwood floor. Put a bath rug underneath the tree stand, fabric side down, rubber side up. You can easily turn the tree to string your lights and place your ornaments just where you want them. It makes 'undecorating' the tree a breeze too. Fold the rug under the tree skirt to keep it hidden. Do you think real Christmas trees harbor bugs? Find out here.

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Crack Nuts with Hand Tools

Crack Nuts with Hand Tools

Family Handyman tested using several different hand tools to crack open a variety of nuts. The good news is that all of the tools we used worked, but a couple got the job done a bit better. Click here to find out what we learned.

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Holiday Light Hangers

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Holiday Light Hangers

Instead of poking nails into aluminum soffits and fascia when you're hanging holiday lights, clip the wires to the bottom lip of the fascia with clothespins. But be careful up on the ladder. Click here to learn more about ladder safety.

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HH handy hint illuminated holiday jars

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Illuminated Holiday Jars

Create illuminating holiday jars with cranberries, greenery and floating candles. Place the greenery (we trimmed ours from a bush outside) followed by fresh cranberries in a jar. Fill the jar with water allowing the cranberries and greenery to float. Add a floating candle to the top, and voila–you have a simple and inexpensive centerpiece to add color and light to your holiday table.

Here’s a collection of clever hints and tips that will make your holiday decorating faster, easier and more fun!

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Easy-Clip Tree Ornaments

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Easy-Clip Tree Ornaments

The wire hooks that come with Christmas tree ornaments can be hard to use and can scratch the ornaments. Instead of wire hangers, use plastic-coated paper clips to hang your ornaments. The paper clips are stronger and easy to use, and best of all, they won't scratch the ornaments, so you can leave them attached when you pack the ornaments away at the end of each season. Don't want to deal with a traditional Christmas tree this year? Check out these ingenious alternatives.

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Make a drill-powered cheese grater.

Drill-Powered Cheese Grater

Maybe you’re preparing a mountain of spaghetti or need to add fresh Parmesan to 100 salads. By simply modifying a run-of-the-mill rotary cheese grater, you grate cheese as fast as you’d like! See how it’s done here.

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Toilet Paper Roll Wrapping Paper Sleeve

Toilet Paper Roll Wrapping Paper Sleeve

This hint will save you from wasting wrapping paper each time you bring it out of storage. Rather than sticking a piece of tape along the loose edge, cut an empty toilet paper tube lengthwise and wrap it around a roll of wrapping paper. Cinch it up and secure the sleeve with a piece of tape. Next time you use the wrapping, you may rip the sleeve when removing it, but your wrapping paper will remain intact.

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Tighten the Tree Stand With a Drill

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Tighten the Tree Stand With a Drill

Tightening tree stand nuts by hand is tiring and takes forever. Here's an alternative: Cut off the little Ls at the end of the tree stand bolts with a hacksaw. ( Be sure the hacksaw blade is installed correctly.) Chuck the ends of the bolts into a variable-speed drill to tighten them into the trunk. You'll be out from under that prickly tree in no time. P.S. It's a fact of Christmas: The tree stand gets overfilled and water stains the carpet or the hardwood floor. To prevent this, a reader suggests placing a plastic water heater tank catch basin between the stand and the floor. Or, you can use a snow saucer.

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How to Add an Outdoor Outlet

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How to Add an Outdoor Outlet

Most homes have only two exterior outlets—one in the front and one in the back. That may be OK most of the year, but it’s a real hassle when you’re hanging holiday lights. It can be dangerous, too. Overloading cords or outlets poses a fire hazard, while crisscrossing your driveway and sidewalk with cords creates tripping hazards. In just a few hours, you can solve these problems forever by adding an outlet or two. Do it safely and easily with this simple through-the-wall technique.

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Unexpected Hiding Places for Holiday Gifts

Unexpected Hiding Places for Holiday Gifts

You’ve tried the attic, a closet in the master bedroom and even a creepy corner of the basement, but your kids have yet to be stumped on where to find their hidden holiday gifts. Instead of those classic spots, click here for some unexpected hiding places to try for this year's holiday gifts.

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Make Cardboard Storage Spools for Your Holiday Light Strings

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Make Cardboard Storage Spools for Your Holiday Light Strings

Next up: How to store Christmas lights. Here's a great way to recycle cardboard and keep your strings of holiday lights from getting tangled when you store them. Just use strips of cardboard and cut out a slot on each end to make a 'spool' to keep the lights from slipping off.

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Dowel Ornament Storage

Dowel Ornament Storage

Use dowels inside a storage bin for organizing your holiday ornaments when the season is over. Measure the length of your bin from one lip to the other; then cut a wooden dowel into two or three pieces of that length. Hang the ornaments on the dowels and hang the dowels on the lip inside the bin.

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Testing Holiday Lights

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Testing Holiday Lights

There’s a way to test (and fix) the entire string of holiday lights without testing each bulb individually. Try the LightKeeper Pro (www.lightkeeperpro.com). It’ll identify and oftentimes fix most problems in miniature and icicle light sets (but not the sets of larger lights or LED lights) with a few squeezes of the trigger.

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Better Holiday Light Clips

Family Handyman

Better Holiday Light Clips

Make inexpensive, long-lasting holiday light clips from common electrical cable wiring staples. Snip the staple in half and fasten it to your fascia or trim with the remaining nail. These clips hold the wire securely, but it's still easy to slip the wire behind the clip. If you have metal fascia, use stainless steel screws so they won't rust. Got some light strings that aren't working? Here's how to repair them.

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Store Holiday Lights on Hanger

Store Holiday Lights on Hanger

Save yourself the stressful task of untangling a messy string of holiday lights by wrapping them around a hanger before putting them in storage. Try to keep the string of lights neat as you wrap it around the hanger, starting on one end and working your way across to the other end, with as little overlap as possible. If your string of lights is quite long, you can continue wrapping a second layer neatly over the first, again with as little overlap as possible. This will help to keep the cord organized and free of tangles when you unwind it for the next holiday season. Take the hassle out of storing your holiday lights and decorations with these simple, inexpensive tips.

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Drill-powered pepper mill.

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Add Spices in a Flash

Are you tired of slowly cranking your pepper mill and getting just a few flakes out? Adding a cordless drill to the process speeds things up! All you need is a drill and a socket.

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Concrete Form Wrapping Paper Storage

Concrete Form Wrapping Paper Storage

Using a 6-ft. cardboard cement form cut in half, I created two wrapping paper storage containers. I cut the cylinder in half and cut pieces of heavy cardboard for the base of each, attaching them with duct tape. Then I spray painted them to look presentable. — Peter Turner Check out what another Christmas-related item you can stuff in a concrete form tube.

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Make Holiday Light Storage Stands

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Make Holiday Light Storage Stands

Storing holiday light strings without wrecking them is tough. Here's a great idea: Just screw a dowel to each end of a wooden base cut to the size of a large plastic bin. Then wrap your lights around the dowels in a figure eight and place the stand in the bin. You'll be amazed how many light strings you can wrap around the stands without them getting tangled or damaged. Check out these other great storage ideas.

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Easy Ornament Storage

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Easy Ornament Storage

It's hard to store fragile ornaments without breaking them. Our best tip for how to store Christmas ornaments is this easy solution: Use a plastic storage tub and store each ornament in a separate plastic cup (the 6-oz. party size works great). By using cardboard to separate the layers of cups, you can stack a lot of ornaments in one sturdy tub without any tangling or breaking. You can reuse the same cups and cardboard year after year.

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Hose Reel for Holiday Lights

Hose Reel for Holiday Lights

To keep holiday lights from getting tangled and make it easy to string them around the yard, roll all the strings of lights onto a portable hose reel with wheels and a handle.

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Gift Wrap Rack

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Gift Wrap Rack

Here's a terrific way to keep rolls of wrapping paper and ribbon handy, dust-free and unwrinkled. Simply glue a bunch of 30-in.-long pieces of 3-in. PVC waste pipe with all-purpose PVC glue. The rack can sit right on your worktable and you can store it underneath or in a closet. Learn more about working with PVC plastic pipe here.

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HH Brush cleaning drill

Speedy Cleaning Before Houseguests Arrive

To make this drill brush you’ll need: a drill, a washer, a bolt, a long machine screw and a brush head replacement. Learn how to put it all together here.

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Store Your Artificial Tree in a Tube

Store Your Artificial Tree in a Tube

Now that the holiday is over, what's the best way to store an artificial Christmas tree? Many people like the convenience of an artificial Christmas tree, but storing it can be a pain because it takes up so much space. Here's an idea: Buy two 8-in.-diameter concrete form tubes, wrap each layer of the tree in twine and shove half of the tree layers down each tube. Mark the layer numbers on each tube and slide the tubes up in your garage rafters for a perfect storage solution! Need more more storage space for your tree and other Christmas decorations? Check out these great garage cabinets.

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Rain-X in Snowthrower Chute

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Rain-X in Snowthrower Chute

Keep your snowthrower at peak performance by spraying Rain-X inside the chute as part of your tune-up routine. That’s what reader John Gossard does! The Rain-X helps to prevent snow and ice from clogging up the chute, so you can move more snow faster.

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Coat Your Snow Shovel with Car Wax

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Coat Your Snow Shovel with Car Wax

Make shoveling snow easier by first coating your metal shovel with car wax. Follow the application instructions on the car wax package. Then the snow and ice will slide right off of the shovel after each scoop.

Originally Published: December 16, 2019