Save Your Holiday Gift List
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
If you’re anything like me and you buy holiday gifts throughout the year based on when they are the least expensive, then I highly suggest saving your holiday gift list to keep track of everything.
I learned early in my life that shopping on December 26th is the best time to buy holiday items at their lowest price. So I usually purchase items like wrapping paper, boxes, holiday cards and décor, and ornaments 364 days before I actually give them to people. That’s a long time to try and remember what you got and for whom. In order to solve that issue, since 2005, I’ve kept an Excel spreadsheet detailing the gifts I’ve purchased for my loved ones. Each year has its own worksheet in the spreadsheet. Each person I shop for has their own column. I keep track of every item I buy and the cost. After any holiday shopping trip, before I store those items away, I take the bags and receipts and add those items and prices to the spreadsheet. So when I’m wrapping gifts around Thanksgiving, I don’t have to worry about remembering the person I intended to give each item to, I have a written record for that.
This spreadsheet ensures that I don’t forget to shop for anyone in my life. As people are born or married into my family or just become dear to me, their name gets added to the spreadsheet. With their names there, I don’t forget to shop for them.
The spreadsheet also helps me to budget. I can see how much I spent the year before, so I can usually estimate how much money I need to have in order to shop for everyone this year.
I keep a worksheet in my holiday spreadsheet for notes. I save specialty websites that I’ve used in the past on this notes page. I order Shutterfly calendars each year for my loved ones, and any helpful notes that I have regarding the process for putting that together are listed in my notes (like the birthdays and anniversaries I need to include or the number of calendars I need to order). This is also the place where I keep shoe and clothes sizes for people.
I also include the people I send holiday cards to on this spreadsheet. It really is a treasure trove of useful information, and it’s fun to look back at past years to see what I’ve gifted in the past. My holiday list doesn’t take a lot of time to maintain, but it definitely saves a lot of time when it’s time to wrap and distribute everything. That’s why a holiday gift list is another checklist that I highly recommend.
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Sincerely Yours,
Focus to Evolve Team