Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Keeping up with birthdays, one month at a time

Especially in a large family it’s not always the easiest thing to keep up with birthdays one at a time – buying cards, making calls, sending gifts. This week’s tip, shared by natenauert, suggests keeping up with them a month at a time.

My wife and I are both the youngest of six kids in our families, so between the siblings and all the in-laws, step-parents, and good friends in our lives, we send a LOT of birthday cards each year! In most cases, when someone is special enough to us to warrant sending a card and/or gift, we both want to write a personal note as well. The only problem is sitting down at the same time to do so numerous times month after month, creating lots of individual to-do items that we have to tackle case by case.

Enter RTM, and our Festivities task list! On the first of every month a task pops up titled “Fill out all birthday cards for the month.” In a note attached to the task, we keep a month-by-month breakdown of relevant birthdays. That way, we can sit down just once to do all the note-writing, stamp-licking, address-enscribing necessary for the whole month. We then have tasks pop up about 1 week before each birthday that simply says “Place Shawn’s card in the mail,” and recurs annually. That way the card is all ready to go and the only thing to be done is to mail it in a timely manner–not too early, not too late.

So now we never forget the milk… or a loved one’s birthday!

Thanks for sharing this tip, natenauert! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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