Plan Your Christmas Shopping

Last year you made a resolution, didn’t you? I think we all make the same resolution every year – the moment we walk into the mall just a few days before Christmas to do all our Christmas shopping in one mad, panicked, frenzy along with everyone else who’s left it to the last minute. We walk through the doors of the mall and stare numbly at the chaos and mutter, “I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this this year.”

What happened to that resolution? There’s still time to act on it and save yourself the madness of the pre-Christmas hordes. With a little planning and a lot of doing, right about now, you will soon find yourself in an enviable position on the sofa with all your presents wrapped, while those less organized around you brace themselves to face the crowds. But it takes action, organization, and some good advice. And here it is:

The Planning Phase

1. Make a list. List everyone you’ll be buying presents for – adults as well as children.
2. Set an overall budget for your entire Christmas shopping. Then divide and apportion this amount between the number of people on the list, so that you set a spending limit for each person.
3. Spend some time thinking about potential gift ideas for each person. Think about each person’s likes and dislikes, their personality, their hobbies, and try to come up with two or three ideas for each person. This is time consuming, but certainly saves on panicked decisions later on.

The Buying Phase

1. Start online first. You’ll often find better prices online, and if there are gifts you are absolutely certain you’ll be buying, save yourself the time and the hassle by grabbing them online first.
2. Troll around toy sites or places like Amazon to help you find your other gift options. Perhaps you’ll be inspired by other things that these sites suggest to you, or perhaps you’ll refine a gift choice after reading customer reviews.
3. Once the bulk of your shopping is done online, head out to the mall for everything else.

The Final Phase

Get those presents wrapped, and depending on just how good you’ve been, either hide them somewhere around the house, or place them under the tree. Then sit back and enjoy the lead-up to Christmas without all the stress of last minute shopping. You could even start planning next Christmas!