I end up throwing the lights away after storing them for the year.

I was just thinking about this! They aren't that expensive, even here. My wife said these were about 20€ - two coffees and a slice of cake. But it is the thought of wastage that makes me untangle them.

I never would have thought to go for a warm white.

So many of the lights these days are cool white, but we chose to have warm for all our LEDs. We also have many Hue lights so we can change the temperature of them on the fly as we need.