Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Planning holiday gifts

You may be reading this thinking, “It’s too early in the year to be planning gifts for the holidays!” Read on: in this week’s tip, laurie09 suggests starting to keep track of any holiday shopping you may do out of season, so as the holidays approach you have a game plan and won’t have to scramble.

As a mom of 9, with grown kids, kids at home and grandkids, it’s always tough to keep Christmas gifts organized. Because of the large size of our family, I have limited the gifts to three apiece. Because I have to hide the gifts, they aren’t in plain sight, and sometimes I buy more gifts for one kid than another, which leads to last-minute scrambling. Today I found my first Christmas gift - a perfect item on deep discount! How to remember it later?

I created a list titled “XMS”. I entered everyone for whom I am planning to give Christmas gifts as a task. I entered last names first so that the list would be grouped (mostly!) by families. I clicked on the person I purchased for, and entered a note describing the gift I bought.

Each person for whom I have completed shopping will be coded priority 3 and fall to the bottom of the list when sorted by priorities. Persons for whom some gifts are bought will be priority 2, and no gifts are priority 1. When I get to crunch-time shopping I’ll be able to see easily what’s left to get.

Now all that’s left is to come up with the money!

We may have a tip for that too! :)

Thanks for sharing this tip, laurie09! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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