Christmas Light Problems

I don't hang the outdoor lights out every year, but every time I do, it seems like I need to purchase new lights. It's incredibly frustrating. And yes, I know this is kind of a first-world problem, but it's making me so mad.

One of the reasons I don't put up lights every year is because all too often the 1-2 year old strands of lights either completely don't work or partially don't work. I have in the past tried to find the bad bulb or bulbs, but all too often I spend hours going through the strand (I get the long ones as to cover the house in one strand) and don't end up finding anything. I haven't found any of the tools that are out there to be all that useful for the LED bulbs.

This afternoon I checked the strand I purchased 2 years ago (I didn't put any lights up last year) and it looked to be all working. I spent a bunch of time stringing them up along the gutters of our house, turned them on, and now one third of them aren't lighting up. WTF?

I'm going to try jostling them once it gets dark to get a better idea of how "off" it ends up looking, but at this point I think I'm done if I can't get this strand working.

The lights aren't exactly cheap and it's wasteful to just throw them out after one season, but fruitlessly and futilely spending hours trying to fix them is just not worth my time or effort. After the first strands stopped working, I moved the lights from the attic to the basement thinking maybe the huge temperature swings in the attic were to blame. The basement, despite having a steady temperature year-round hasn't helped.

After this year and this recurring issue, I think I'll be done putting out lights each Christmas. I like the way our house looks at Christmas, but not enough to keep shelling out money and the time to try to constantly fix the lights.

If anyone has any other thoughts on how to more easily keep strands working or fix them, I'm all ears.