Holiday Decorating: Cut Costs, Keep Your Family And Pets Safe

The holiday shopping season is in full swing and neighborhoods are starting to light up with bright decorations. As you decorate your home for the holidays, there are steps you can take to save money and protect your home, family and even your pets.

To cut costs on your lighting bill, Orange and Rockland Utilities suggests using holiday decorations that contain energy-efficient LED (light emitting diode) fixtures instead of conventional incandescent bulbs. O&R says LED lights use nearly 90 percent less electricity than older bulbs.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has found that each year, more than 1,000 people are treated in hospital emergency rooms for injuries related to holiday lights and trimmings. In addition, Christmas trees are involved in about 500 fires annually, resulting in about $20 million in property loss and damage each year.

To keep your home safe, the commission recommends:

• When purchasing decorative lights, make sure they have the approval label of a testing laboratory like Underwriters’ Laboratories, that familiar UL symbol.

• Check older light sets to make sure their wires are not frayed or have worn bare spots on them, and replace them if they are damaged.

• Use no more than three standard-sized sets of lights per extension cord.

• Never use electric lights on a metallic tree. The tree can become charged with electricity from faulty lights, and injure anyone touching it. Instead, use a colored spotlight above or below the metal tree, never attached to it.

• Always unplug holiday lights when going to bed or leaving the house.

• If you decorate outdoors, as many of us do, make sure to use lights designed for exterior use. Those units are typically more sturdily constructed, and can stand up better to winter wind and weather.

• Don’t overload your household electric outlets with multiple plugs on multiple plugs.

• And, running extension cords under rugs presents a potential safety hazard, and a potential fire hazard.

While keeping your family safe during the holiday, there are also hazards to watch for that could injure your pet.

Nationwide Insurance warns about the top five dangers to pets over the holidays:

1. Holiday tinsel and ornaments can attract your pets and can become choking hazards.

2. Holiday lighting and candles also can attract pets, which can be electrocuted if they chew on wires or can be burned — or start a fire — if they knock over candles.

3. Gift wrap ribbon can be a choking hazard.

4. Food Hazards: Festive events often mean edible treats — and lots of them. However, some popular holiday items, such as chocolate, bones and nuts, can be  toxic or fatal to pets.

5. Some holiday plants are poisonous — even deadly — with as little as a single leaf from any lily variety being lethal to cats. Don't let pets get at Holly, Mistleoe, Poinsettias or pine needles.