Home Depot already removed ALL christamas Lighting

[tlogan]

Ran into my local Home Depot yesterday to return something (that's 12/14/2021 for future references) and couldn't help but notice that ALL of the Christmas lighting was GONE. TOTALLY empty shelves along that wall. No spare bulbs, strings of ANY kind, timers, extra extension cords...NOTHING, Except trees. MANY trees still in the aisle in front of the empty shelves.

I HOPE I don't need to replace anything this season...you know, when the lights are actually ON and it will be the most likely time to burn out. I don't know about you, but I've never had one burn out while siting in storage. Although, I will say that they tend to get tangled while sitting in storage. So, I don't maybe they do burnout in storage. I had a tiny wireframe deer go out and I can see that almost every bulb is blown, so I thought while in the HD I'd see if I could find a replacement, or, you know, pick up some replacement bulbs, but NOOooooo. And it looked like MOST of those Chroistmas  tool specials in the aisles usually in front of the registers were gone, too.  

[TheDucks]

I was in Wal*Mart a few weeks ago and they were shuffling stock. Basically they had Garlands  and Trees left 🙂

[tlogan]

DANG! WallyWorld was going to be my next place to check out.

[TheDucks]

Just now, tlogan said:

DANG! WallyWorld was going to be my next place to check out.

I have no idea what the East coast picture is. If it is not a major trip, get there and see.

I do know the 2 nearby stores can't get the season display 'Set' before it is devastated.

[tlogan]

Well, my afternoon meetings just got cancelled so maybe I'll run over there this afternoon. I don't know about WMs on the West Coast, but I know I only go to the ones around here out of necessity. 

[hasslerk]

The whole reason I moved to 100% LED is because somehow, someway, my experience is that incandescent bulbs do burn out in storage.  I could put a string away that worked when I unplugged it only to have it fail when I plugged it in the next season.  Maybe it has something to do with them also tying themselves in knots in the off season.  🙂

[tlogan]

@hasslerkI find that with LED Net lights, too.

[Orville]

For those having burned out incans after placing them in storage, when you unplugged them, did they happen to still be "on"?   If so, one thing I *DO* know about incans, the filaments are extremely fragile and will break if the bulb was on when removed and jerked around when rolling them up to put them away.  Even if they had been off for a short time, the filaments in incans are notorious for failing{breaking inside the bulb} if jostled too much.   And if you just "toss" them in a bin onto others in the same bin, even if they've been off for hours can still cause the filaments to break inside the bulb{s}.

When I took mine down, when I was using standard mini or larger incan bulbs, if they were tossed, jostled about, or handled just a little too rough, the next year I took them out, bam, several burned out or non-working incan bulbs, happened with some LED strands, but with LED's that was extremely rare.

So when I started taking incan strands down I would gently take them down, wrap them gently and then tie each strand with a Zip Tie and place {NOT toss} them into their proper bin onto each other.   After doing this, I rarely had any burned out bulbs in those incan strands.  I also kept them in a cool place, not an area that got excessive heat, as excessive heat seemed to sometimes cause a strand  to have some bulbs fail as well.

\Just how I started handling mine on set-up and take down, so not to have massive strand failures the following season.

But, as with anything incandescent, those bulbs are still prone to fail, especially at the most inopportune time, and usually always the one or more that are always or seem to be, out of reach.

Just my experience with incan strands, your experience may not be like mine, but just some info and suggestions on how I handled my incan{and LED} strands when I was using them.