On the average year, my husband and I have 16 Christmas gifts to buy for family. To eliminate stress, I start buying for Christmas in January. Basically every 3 weeks, I buy a gift. This is also a huge help on the budget.
After I buy the (or finishing making) the gift, I go ahead and wrap it, put on the gift tag and put it into the Christmas box. But, to keep track, I put a number on the back of the gift tag. Then I keep a small tablet in the Christmas box with the gift tag number, and I write who it is for, what it is..... so I will remember what I got who.
I find that it works best to save children's gifts for the later part of the year. It makes it easier to determine the correct size or toy.
This works best if you stick to "generic" type of gifts for adults, such as a nonexpirable gift card, towels, blanket, hat and gloves. Basically just items that won't go out of date, out of style or require a particular size.
By April from Missouri
My sister who just recently passed away did her shopping like that. She wrapped them in newspaper and jotted the name and item in the margin of an article and stuck them in her "Santa closet". That way she kept snoopy grandkids from finding out what was there. (01/08/2008)
By Marty Dick
One way to keep track of whose is whose without putting tags on the gifts (to avoid snoopers finding their gifts) is to wrap the gifts in colored coded wrapping paper. Johnny's gifts are all wrapped in green, Suzie's in red, Bobby's in striped, etc
We have four kids and this works well for us. The kids all had surprised looks on their faces Christmas morning so I can only assume our system was a success! =) (12/29/2008)
By Joanne
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