The year is coming to an end, and it’s time to schedule the takedown of your customers’ holiday lighting. With these tips, you can use the same visit to help prepare for irrigation and landscape work in the spring.

Schedule the Takedown Service

After the holidays, your customers may want to get the lights taken down quickly. We recommended first contacting those repeat holiday lighting customers, then the first-time customers. Depending on the size of your holiday lighting client base, there may be more requests than time available. For the customers you can’t get to immediately, offer a quick visit to turn off the holiday lights. This will help ensure the customers' lights are not on and save on the electric costs until you are able to come takedown the lights.

Once you are on the job site, there are a few things you can do to prepare for the next holiday season.

Prepare for Next Year

It is easy to remove the lights and call it done. However, if you take a little extra time you can be ready to install the holiday lights next November.

Consider storage options, not where to store but how to store the lighting. If the lights are tossed into a bag for storage, there is a risk of breaking bulbs in the process. Using bins or boxes provides protection for the product and helps ensure next year the lights can be installed without time being spent to replace any broken pieces.

Each customer has a different look they want with their holiday lighting. As the lights are removed and stored, you can label the storage containers to identify where those lights go. Keeping the roofline lights separated from landscaping lights will come in handy next holiday season. When you arrive to install the lights, you already have some idea of the design elements. It can be helpful to take a photo before you start to remove the lights. This photo will help you deliver the same stunning festive flare as before. Another step to make next year’s install easy is label the connectors. Use tape and write A on the male and female ends, then B for the next connection. Next install, just connect the letters.

Have you figured out where to store the lights? To review how to set up the storage, check out our tips outlined in How to Add Holiday Lighting as a Service.

Before you leave your customers’ home, take a few extra minutes to prepare for the spring work by reviewing the irrigation and landscape.

Make the Most of Your Visit

Springtime is one of the busiest times of the year for the green industry professionals. Get ahead of the work by using the takedown visit as a preliminary inspection of the irrigation system, including proper drainage. Our tutorial video “How to Inspect a Sprinkler System” can help you survey the watering system. Checking these components will allow you to make adjustments and repairs instead of getting the call from the customer about flooding in their yard.

It is important to also check out the landscape. The cold month could cause plants to die and those will need to be replaced. The customer could be looking to add more plants or aesthetics to the yard. The updates for the yard could be adding lighting options or fire features. Ask your customers what they want to do to update or enhance their outdoor area. Check out this video for tips.

This proactive approach during the removal of the holiday lighting and assessment of the landscape needs will impress your customers while saving you time.