So, like my wife and me, you love Christmas (or Hallowe’en houses) and you love to set up your Christmas village, and now – it happens more often than you’d like – you’ve pushed one of those never-sufficiently-to-be-accursed clips all the way into the house and you can’t get it out.

You’ve worked at it with tweezers and hemostats, and you’ve got one side out, but that other one is just unreachable. Yarg snarl yarg.

Here’s what I do, and I hope someone finds it useful.

1) The first thing to do is get one side out all the way. With a long tweezers or a hemostat, this is usually pretty easy.

2) With a thin piece of duct tape, pinch the metal clip to the body of the lightbulb.

3) Now you can push the lightbulb all the way back into the house and have enough room to grab the second clip.

4) Out it comes. Take off the duct tape, re-seat the bulb, and you’re good to go.

Happy Holidays!

The Old Wolf has spoken.