It’s time for some real talk. The holidays are a busy, busy time. Between shopping, wrapping, cooking, visiting, driving, cleaning, stuffing, and everything else, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
There’s one thing you really don’t want to have to worry about during the holidays, however: electrical mishaps. Especially with everybody being busy and running around like reindeer in a snow storm, there are a lot of chances for things to go wrong.
Part of our mandate as your local electronics store is to try to help our customers with everything we can electronics related. So, we went ahead and put together this handy list of things to look out for over the coming weeks to help you be more prepared!
Cord Conundrums
Chances are you are going to be plugging in more and more electronics over the holidays, whether it’s that tree, holiday lights, or a brand new 4K television that you just picked out from your favorite local electronics store.
No matter what you buy, you are going to need places to plug everything in! Most houses aren’t going to be equipped with nearly enough outlets to manage everything at once, which leads a lot of people to shortcuts like extension cables and multi-outlet surge protectors.
Those are all fine and dandy, but you want to make sure you aren’t creating a problem with all those cords. The biggest thing is to make sure that you aren’t plugging surge protectors or extension cables into one another and potentially overloading anything.
Battery Bounties
There’s nothing worse than having a kid open a brand new electronic only to find that it needs batteries.
Before you wrap up all of the presents this year, make sure to check if any of them use batteries. Many probably won’t have batteries included, and some might even need weird sizes that you won’t usually have sitting around in the house.
If you really wanted to go the extra mile, wrap up the batteries and give them to your kids first. They won’t know what they go to, and you’ll be able to stretch out the surprise a little bit longer!
No Snow
Don’t put your new electronics in the snow, no matter what they are. Just don’t do it. Don’t stick your tongue to the flag pole, either.
Download Disease
New video game systems are common presents, but a lot of parents might not know that these systems often need to be plugged in and connected to the internet to get all set up and ready to go.
To make matters even worse, download and update servers tend to get swamped on big days, so your kids could spend their holidays watching an update meter slowly crawl forward instead of actually using their new system. To avoid this, get sneaky and creative: Get the console set up early and get all the updates downloaded, and then put it back in the box and wrap it. Problem solved!
Of course, if you are still trying to come up with some last-minute gift ideas, come on by! We’re conveniently located right in your neighborhood, and have a wide range of electronics that would make perfect gifts for every person on your list! Just remember to stay smart with your electronics, and have a safe and happy holiday season!