My Thank You Note Tracking System

Long, long, ago, I married my husband and became the grateful recipient of many lovely wedding and bridal shower gifts. Unfortunately, I only made it about half way through my thank you note list before the list disappeared.

For many, many, months, I believed that my husband threw the list away. You can imagine how vindicated he felt when I FOUND the list... in a pile of papers, on my desk, at my office. (Fortunately, he's a nice guy, so he didn't rub it in much.) Yes, the paper organization at my desk was a little out of control. Do I have a picture? Let me see.... here we are on a good day:

Anyway. I feebly attempted to resume my task of writing out my wedding thank you notes. This was challenging because I was having a lot of trouble staying awake. I could manage to crawl out of bed each morning and drag myself to work more or less on time, work 8 hours, and then drag home and fall asleep on the couch. I was having to take little naps in the parking lot of the grocery store before going in to shop--and when I did muster the energy to go in, I would try very hard not to throw up.

Yes, I was expecting a baby. A Big One. It was all I could do to do my job, sleep enough, eat enough, and do all the things I needed to do to prepare to be a parent. Things that fell by the wayside included the wedding thank you notes, unpacking in our new house, cleaning our new house, and paying any attention whatsoever to my poor husband (usually I was unconscious on the couch when he arrived home).

Then, of course, when my son arrived, there was a new round of lovely gifts, meaning a new list of thank you notes needed to be written. I am proud to say that I managed to keep up with these, but I never managed  to completely complete my wedding thank you note list. I regret it to this day. (No, I don't know where the list is now... Argh!)

As a result of this sad story, I decided to set up a system in my calendar/address book to track thank you note writing. It is a very simple system, and it has worked well for over 6 years now! Any gift recorded on the list eventually has a note written for it.

How it works:

I keep a tabbed section in my planner with a set of paper titled 'Gift and Card List' (any lined paper will suffice). I simply write the person's name, the gift they gave, and the person in our family who received the gift. When the thank you note is written, I check it off on the list.

The list is impossible to lose because it's in my planner! The list is conveniently stored with my tabbed address book within the planner, so when I write a thank you note, the address that I need is immediately on hand. I can even look back and figure out who gave us a particular gift if I need to know, for instance if I want to ask a person where they found a particularly unique gift.

Thank you note tips:

• Combine them when possible. My children were both born in August, so I am not ashamed to report that I wait until September to write thank you notes for their gifts, and combine the gifts given to both children in one note (this is changing as they are old enough to write their own notes; see below). This also works for me in December; I combine notes for my birthday and Christmas gifts from the same person.  

• 4 year olds can write thank you notes. I have some fill-in-the-blank thank you notes that my 6 year old had been using, and I discovered that my 4 year old can write them (almost legibly!) if I spell the words letter-by-letter. This is a great way to keep her entertained when I'm working in the kitchen. She draws a puppy picture on the back of each one.
•  Avoid keeping your list on scrap paper that can be lost easily. I keep my list in my planner so that I can't get lost in a pile. I can open the rings and remove one sheet to lists gifts given at a party, and it's always conveniently located next to my address list in the planner, which I always need when writing the thank you notes.
• A gift bag works well as a tote to store all your note-writing supplies. This tote contains the cards and envelopes that the kids have been using to write their notes, as well as the special stamps they picked out: My son picked The Simpsons (no longer available), and my daughter picked Puppies and Kittens.

This is what works for me!

And to everyone who did NOT receive a thank you note from me for our wedding gifts, I apologize. Your gift was and still is greatly appreciated. :)

Holiday Prep: Shipping Strategies Part 1

1. Make a list of packages you need to ship
If you're like me, you have at least a few Christmas gift recipients on your list to whom you will need to ship gifts this holiday season. Now is a good time to figure out who those lucky people are so that you can plan accordingly.

2. Purchase Packing Tape

Buy an extra one, because you will run out of tape on the first roll when you are halfway through packing everything up. I haven't figured out a way to avoid paying for tape; it's the only thing I purchase other than the shipping label.

3. Assemble Free Shipping Supplies

I've been shipping a lot of items this year as I've been working on my declutter challenge, and I'm proud to say that I have my shipping strategies down to a science. (Mostly.) I'm pleased that by recycling packaging that I receive, and using the resources at the post office, I've avoided having to spend money on anything other than packing tape and the shipping label itself! There are two ways I collect free shipping supplies:

• Save packaging when shipped items are delivered to your house. I set up a storage area for shipping supplies in my basement so that when a package arrives, I can stow the useful packaging (boxes, air bags, bubble wrap, foam wrap, etc.) until I am able to reuse it. I don't save packing peanuts because they tend to make a mess. My favorite shipping material to reuse is a heavy duty plastic envelope. Turn it inside out, pack, tape, and seal. Presto!



• Order flat rate shipping supplies from usps.com. You can order flat rate shipping boxes and envelopes online, and the post office will deliver them to you for free! The minimum number of boxes in an order is 10, so if you just need a few, it may make more sense for you to pick them up individually from your post office. It costs $4.90 to send a flat rate envelope or small box, and more for a medium  or large flat rate box. (I find that the flat rate envelope and small box are most cost effective, unless sending heavy items long distances, such as across the country.)

4. Schedule a Shipping Deadline

Look at the calendar and figure out when would make sense for you to ship your items. I like to strike a balance between shipping closer to Christmas (because my grandmother opens her stuff right away) yet early enough so that I can have it out of the way in time to focus on local preparations. Make it a priority to purchase/make/bake items to be shipped sooner rather than later so that you will be prepared to ship all of your items at once. Remember to schedule time to pack the boxes; this step always seems to take longer than I expected.

In early December, I will explain how I avoid going to the post office completely, as well as what I do if I absolutely have to go to the post office.

This is one way I am trying to get organized for the holidays. I hope it works for you!

Holiday Prep: Sending Holiday Cards before Christmas is Over

If you would like to send your Holiday Cards before the Holiday Season is over, it's best to do as much of the prep work as possible BEFORE Thanksgiving.

Step 1: Review and Revise your holiday card list. My criteria is this: if you don't feel like writing a personal message to the person/family, remove them from your list. Add any new friends/family members that you've connected with over the past year. This could include your new neighbors, or your husband's long lost cousin whom the family reunited with this year. Hunting down the addresses now will save your sanity next month. If it isn't already, quickly type up your list on the computer. Then you can update it next year more easily.

Step 2: Count up your list, and order your holiday stamps online. Right now! It only costs a dollar for the mail carrier to deliver them to your door. Before you order, check to see if you have holiday stamps left over from last year. Include extra  holiday stamps for your thank you notes if you are neurotic like me. :)

Step 3: Do you have return address labels? If not, save yourself some writing time and order some cute holiday return address labels--again, get enough to cover your thank you notes as well. You could print your own if you're so inclined.

Step 4: Determine what type of holiday card you plan to send, meaning a traditional folded card, or a photo card, or a traditional card with a photo holder? Or a newsletter? Design and/or purchase your cards now. I recommend 1/2 dozen extra if you want some on hand in case you forgot someone in Step 1. If you are sending a photo card, consider purchasing an acid-free scrapbooking pen so that you can write on the back of the cards (optional).

Step 5: As your supplies start arriving, keep them all together in a bag or other container--I like to use a small-size handled gift bag--along with your address book. You know that you are ready to start writing your holiday cards when the bag contains the following items:

• Checklist (print the list you wrote up in Step 1)
• Stamps
• Return Address Labels
• Cards, photos (optional) and Envelopes
• Pen (optional photo-safe pen)
• Address Book/Printout

If you are really organized, you should have all of these items assembled before Thanksgiving. Before I had children, I would assemble my supplies in this way, and take them on the airplane with me when I went visit my grandparents over Thanksgiving weekend. I would work on them on the flight down as well as the flight back, and have more of them done and ready to mail by December 1st!

This has not occurred again since my kids came along. Instead of writing pleasant holiday messages on the airplane, I am corralling my dear children, who are actually pretty well behaved on flights, but not well-behaved enough for me to write holiday cards. I must admit that there have been numerous years when some of my holiday cards did not make it past Step 5.

This year, I am determined to have my supplies bag ready to tote along and work on whenever I have down time. The steps occurring at this point are as follows:

Step 6: Write a personal greeting and sign your name.
Step 7: Stuff, seal, address, stamp, send!

Your kids can participate in these two steps by:

• Signing their name
• Sealing the envelope
• Attaching return address labels and stamps

This is one way I am trying to get prepared for the holidays.

Holiday Prep: Review Last Year

Somehow I managed to schedule a pop-up reminder telling me to review the notes I made about Christmas 2009 back in January when I was clearing up Christmas. The notes are just a single page Word document with reviews of how things went, reminders for this upcoming year, and a few ideas of new things to try. It's like having a conversation with a past verson of myself to help jog my memory regarding various and sundry Christmas Stuff that I otherwise won't think of until it's too late.

I'm hoping this miscellaneous list will spare me a few emergency trips to the store and help me to plan a little better than last year; for instance, I need to recognize that gift wrapping will take 6-8 hours and it would be best to schedule time to get the wrapping done during the day rather than staying up all night one night, all the way past sunrise. (I had no idea it would take that long! And yes, I have a very big family and we do quite a bit of gift exchanging. And no, I am too neurotic to use gift bags in most cases.)

It's one way that I am trying to get prepared for the holidays.

Holiday Prep: A Series

I have a rule about Christmas. The rule is that Christmas must be contained to the month of December. This means that any and all Christmas decorations must not go up until after my birthday (Dec 9th), and must come down during as soon as possible after New Years Day. Christmas Shopping and Shipping are properly done in December. Holiday Photos are taken in December, holiday cards are written and mailed in December...

I really like this rule because it makes me prioritize and limit Christmas Activities. I enjoy the holiday season, but one month's worth is plenty for me. At the same time, it seems like there is more and more to do to get ready for the holidays each year. As our family grows, and I volunteer to help at school, AND I entertain more around the holidays, I've found that I must be very organized and cheat bend the rules as much as possible if I want to get ANY sleep at all during the month of December!

I am going to share a few of my Holiday Preparation tips during the upcoming weeks in the hopes that they will be as helpful to others as they have been for me.