Making Life Easier: Stocking Up for Birthdays
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I’m a planner. Not always a great stick-to-it-er… but I can plan with the best of them. I’ve color-coded my kids {ahem… on the calendar}, have my own homeschool/household planner, a central wall calendar, and separate my emails with tidy little “rules” in Outlook.
I crave order.
Years ago, I started buying birthday gifts and keeping them in big plastic bins in the basement. I have my gifts catalogued and labeled with sticky notes. There are gifts for each of my kids, the friends we buy for each year, extended family, and generic all-purpose gifts for those occasions that pop up.
The best part about stocking up is that I can take advantage of end-of-the season sales or clearance racks when I come across them. I pick up some of my favorite things for little kids, big kids, boys, and girls anytime I run across a great sale.
Up until now, though, I haven’t been very good about remembering to stock birthday cards along with the gifts.
I was recently issued the challenge to see how easy it was to stock up on birthday cards the next time I was at Walmart – and was thrilled to take on the challenge. My busiest time of the year is rapidly approaching. Between the middle of October and the first week of the new year, I’ll celebrate 10 birthdays {including mine!}, so I really need to be prepared this time of the year.
The kids and I went to Walmart to pick up a few gifts and extra school supplies because we knew that summer toys and school supplies would be marked down. While we were there, we swung over to the Hallmark aisle to grab some cards to add to our stash. I loved the Connections by Hallmark section.
The selection was fabulous. I’m not that into super-sappy cards or insulting humor and, while I found cards that fit those categories, I also found lots and lots of sweet and sentimental cards. I let the girls pick out cards for Trevor, and they worked together to choose cards for me, my mom, and our friends.
The Guess Who? game above was inspiration to find a few “peekaboo” type cards. The girls loved looking at some pop-up cards and chose a hamster dance musical pop-up and a penguin baby pop-up.
Because I want to make sure I use the cards and large collection of gifts hidden away in bins, I created the following printable to help me remember what I have and to whom I plan to give it.
I simply print it, punch holes in it, and put it in my home organization binder. I hope you can use it too.
Now that I realize how easy it is to swing over and grab a few affordable cards while I’m in Walmart, I’m planning to add it into my routine and snag a few for different occasions each time I’m there.
Do you have any tips to help make life easier on you and your family when it comes to organizing birthdays – for you and for friends?
