Yesterday, I put up my Christmas lights.

Way back in 2016, when I reroofed my house, I installed outlets under the eaves, so I could plug in Christmas lights without having to run extension cords.

You can only connect three strands of Christmas lights together without blowing a fuse, and since I put my lights up the same way every year, I ran extension cords to the same places every year. So the locations I chose to place the outlets were where I always had to run extension cords in the past.

In the past, I’ve used plastic clips to hang the lights, but I really wanted to use the clips attached to each socket. The only problem is that you can only use those little clips if your power source is to the left of the wire because of the side of the socket the clip is on. I’ve never run my Christmas lights from left to right before, and since these new strings are only 19′ due to shrinkflation, I wasn’t sure how far three strings would get me, so I just used plastic clips and ran them the way I’m used to.

When I got to the second floor, however, I realized that the outlet was on the left, and I could use the little clips as they were intended to be used. I liked seeing all of the bulbs standing at attention with uniform space between them.

So, today, I spent the afternoon taking all of my Christmas lights down, turning them around, and putting them back up from left to right.

It was worth it.