As part of the Organize and Refine Your Home Challenge, we’re tackling all things Holiday Organization. Learn how to use a gift tracker to organize your holiday shopping + tons of other awesome holiday shopping tips!
LAST UPDATED February 2023
Ready to continue on our journey to a less stressful holiday season? Great!
So far this month, we’ve simplified things by taking a good chunk of holiday obligations off of your plate. We also started the holiday planning process off with a bang by creating a holiday planning binder AND deciding what tasks to delegate. Onto this week’s focus — organizing your holiday shopping.
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Why are we spending an entire week on the holiday shopping and the gift-giving process? Well my friend, take a look at the tasks on your Master To Do list and tally up just how many of those tasks fall under the broad category of holiday shopping. If you’re like most, it’s actually a fairly large chunk of the list.
But never fear my Pretties…with a little preparation and the right tools, you can tackle your holiday shopping like a Pro.
How to Organize the Holiday Shopping Process
1. Use a holiday gift tracker to keep a running list of gift ideas throughout the year
It never fails.
When I’m on the spot to come up with a fabulous gift idea for ANYONE in December, I’ve got nothing. But many times, I stumble upon the MOST PERFECT gift for someone while browsing through a catalog in March, or while surfing the web for something totally unrelated in June.
Do this one simple thing to capture those awesome gift ideas:
Create a GIFT IDEAS list on your smartphone.
I use the NOTES app that’s native to my iPhone for this purpose. I’m certain that there’s a similar app for you Android folks. The beauty of capturing the ideas on your phone is that most of us always have our phones with us (I love using my smartphone as a memory aid!).
Come December when it’s time to begin planning your holiday gift shopping, simply open up that list to refer to during the planning process, and you’re good to go! You can also use a basic gift tracking app to capture great gift ideas throughout the year as well (see below for a list of options).
Of course, another option is to purchase those perfect gifts at the moment you stumble upon them, and not wait until the holiday season. This shopping method has its advantages, since making holiday gift purchases throughout the year is certainly less jarring on the budget.
My only word of warning: be sure to keep track of what you purchase throughout the year and where you’ve stored those gifts 🙂
2. Set your holiday budget & determine who’s on the “Nice List”
The first step in organizing your holiday shopping is to set an overall budget for holiday gifts. Having a magic number that you’ve determined ahead of time will help you to keep your spending in check in the coming weeks.
Next, make a list of each and every person that you plan to buy for this holiday. If your list is fairly extensive, it might be helpful to create separate lists for various categories of gift recipients.
For example:
- immediate family members
- extended family members
- friends
- co-workers/boss
- teachers/coaches
- service providers
- general hostess & party gifts.
Next, set a person-specific budget. Determine how much of the overall budget you’ll allocate to each gift recipient on your list.
Going through this exercise before you begin the shopping process will help you to set some boundaries up front and hopefully prevent you from going Hog Wild (you know, that tendency to buy just one more thing).
There are some super helpful gift tracking apps available to help you organize and manage the gazillion details involved in the holiday gift-giving process. These apps also do a great job of keeping track of your holiday spending.
You can set an overall budget and then with each purchase, see at a glance how much you’ve spent and your remaining budget balance.
Here are a few gift tracking apps to check out:
For those of you who prefer to organize on paper, I’ve created a Holiday Gift Tracker that you can use to manage the shopping and gift-giving process (& keep track of your spending). Print out a copy and tuck it into your holiday planning binder for reference.
{click image to download the gift tracker}
3. Do your research and gather your coupons
Before you pull out your wallet, spend some time researching opportunities to save money on your gift purchases. With a list of gift ideas in hand, scour the newspaper or conduct some online research to see where you can score those gift purchases for the best price.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday provide some great opportunities to save beaucoup bucks. Those who score the best deals do their homework beforehand. Check out some of the most popular price comparison apps to see how they can help you determine the best place to snag the items on your shopping list.
This is also the perfect time to organize your coupons. By going through them and tossing the expired ones, you’ll be able to quickly identify any coupons that you can use to make gift purchases.
4. Shop online as much as possible
For me, happiness is Amazon Prime!
Shopping in my PJs on the sofa is my idea of the perfect shopping excursion. In addition to avoiding the crowds, some of the other advantages of shopping online include:
- less impulse buying (when you’re laser-focused on purchasing a specific item online, you’re less likely to end up with extraneous items in your shopping cart)
- the ability to ship items directly to an out-of-town gift recipient (often at no cost)
- an easy way to manage gift receipts (you can consolidate all of them in a designated email folder)
- efficiency! (no driving or waiting in lines)
What’s not to love, right?
The only tricky part about shopping online is keeping track of where the gift is in the order/shipment/delivery process.
This time of year, I seem to have an Amazon Prime box arriving on my doorstep just about every day. I use a basic spreadsheet to keep track of when a gift purchase has been delivered to my house (or to the gift recipient if shipped directly to them).
You could also track online gift orders by using this printable Online Gift Tracker:
{click image to download your online gift tracker}
5. If you must shop in stores, do it the right way
If you’re old school and prefer to visit stores to complete your holiday shopping, here are some helpful tips for successfully navigating the shopping process:
- Go during off-peak times – Shop early in the morning and on weekdays to avoid lines and crowds (Wednesdays are generally the slowest day of the week).
- Map out your route – If you plan to tackle multiple stores in one shopping excursion, take some time upfront to map out the most efficient route so that you’re not driving all over the place and wasting precious time (and gas).
- Build in some time for a lunch/dinner break – There’s nothing worse than fighting store crowds when you have a bad case of the hangrys!
6. Create a system for storing your holiday receipts
Returns are an inevitable part of the holiday gift-giving process. I’m a huge fan of including a gift receipt along with the gift. That way, if there are any issues with the gift, the gift recipient doesn’t need to involve you in the returns process.
Of course, if it’s your family member, you’ll need to be the one handling the return/exchange. To avoid post-Christmas headaches, it’s super helpful to put a temporary system in place for storing your holiday receipts.
I have a regular system for storing receipts for items I may return. But I prefer to store receipts for holiday gifts separately from other receipts. I store paper receipts in a large envelope, while electronic receipts are stored in a designated folder within my email.
My rule of thumb is to hang on to these receipts for three months after Christmas, which is ample time to determine whether or not you need to return an item.
If you follow these tips, your holiday shopping and gift-giving system will be operating like a well-oiled machine this season. And all that will be left to do is wrap those gifts!
Organize Your Holiday Shopping Assignment:
- Create your Gift Ideas list on your smartphone or a gift tracker app in order to capture gift ideas year-round
- Create your list of gift recipients
- Establish an overall budget and a person-specific budget
- Do research to find the best price for each item on your shopping list
- Organize your coupons and identify ones that you can use for specific purchases
- Put a system in place (paper gift tracker or app) to manage the gift purchase & online gift tracking processes
- Put a system in place for storing holiday receipts
Drop me a line and share how you plan to organize your holiday shopping (are you a digital or paper person?)
More Holiday Organization Help
- Your Holiday To Do List: 8 Holiday Prep Tasks to Do Early
- Holiday Organization and Planning Tips from Organizing Experts
- Creating a Digital Holiday Decor Inventory
- Using a Gift Tracker to Organize Holiday Shopping
- Holiday Planner
- DIY Christmas Card Display Ideas
- Gift Wrap Storage and Organization Ideas
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This post is part of the Organize and Refine Your Home Challenge
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Debra Needles says
Thanks for sharing these great tips with us at the Funtastic Friday Blog Hop! I hope we see you again soon!
Natalie Gallagher says
Merry Christmas Debra…so glad to hear from you!