Holiday Organization Challenge : Day 5

Share my screen. I hope that some of this stuff has been helpful this week. Okay. All right. Okay, I'm gonna get started. So today is all about gifting. Gifting with ease. Like how to make it easier, how to make it a little bit less stressful, how to make it easier on the budget, all of that good stuff. So. And I know definitely for me, like, when I was younger, I liked gifts of a certain type, but as I've, you know, became a parent and other things, my, my need for gifts is definitely not like it used to be. And I like to have the simple things. So we'll definitely talk about some of the simple things today. So. Okay. So again, I just want, you know, here, I just want to say I think we often make it complicated and I think that we often. Oh, thank you, Tina. I'm glad that the calendar was helpful. But yeah, I think we make it complicated and I think we put too much stress on ourselves. I think I mentioned yesterday about my son. He's 27 and, you know, he's got a young family and he wants to just give, you know, he feels like he has to give gifts. And I'm trying to tell him, don't worry about it. I know he's done it in the past and he loves to be really creative and think of great gifts for people that he's close to, but he just can't afford it and that's okay. And I tell him, don't worry about it, you know, and there's so many things that people enjoy that you don't even have to spend a lot of money for. Right. So hopefully we can talk about that because there are a lot of different alternatives. So. Okay, so I will note I have two downloadables today. One is kind of gift giving with ease and talks about like, how to create a budget and there's like a template. It talks about some of the content we're going to talk about today, which is gift exchanges, different types of gift exchanges, different type of low or no cost gifts and that kind of stuff. And then I do have a holiday gift guide that has gift ideas for her, for him, for teenage girl, teenage boy, toddler boy, toddler girl. Thank you. Gifts. You know, the gifts for teachers or the babysitters or, you know, carpool coaches and. Oh, and I had to include gifts for organizers. Love all that stuff. So I have those two and I'll give you guys the links and I'll show you a little bit more about what's in there in a little bit. Okay, so let's talk about budgeting. So I think the thing that can catch people off guard a lot of times this time of year is that obviously a lot of people talk about gifts and what the budget is and should be for gifts. But there's so many other places that you can spend a lot of money, like just hosting. Like I often host, we rotate it. But I host Thanksgiving, you know, and I can easily spend 3, $400 easily just hosting Thanksgiving. We have 30 to 35 people every year. And by the time you buy the turkey and if you're having ham and even if you don't do all the sides, just doing that, any linen decorations, any drinks, all that stuff, it really adds up. And if you don't think about that in your holiday budget, you know, it can really catch you off guard and you can end behind. Right? So some of the things to consider the obvious is gifts. And I won't talk much about that. Right. So everybody knows, like, you know, if you're going to buy gifts, you kind of know what your budget is, but you also have things like gift wrap is not cheap, right. It's good to definitely buy it on sale after the season, but definitely that can add up Cards and postage if you want to mail packages. That is something definitely you want to make sure you factor into your budget cards. We'll also talk about other ways to like save money. But you can do E cards now, right? You don't even have to, you know, who's that? Who's that? Main part, it's like American greetings, I think, americangreetings.com and you can send them for free. And some of them are so fun. I love them. You can put personal messages in there. So you don't even have to mail cards. And I know it's fun to get cards, so I definitely get it if you want to do it. But just make sure you factor in the postage and the cost of the cards. When you're budgeting, budget for any decorations, any activities that you do. Like, for example, we are doing. I'm taking the family and my granddaughter to this show that we have. I forget what it's called, but it's basically says like, lights, lights galore. It's insane. It's crazy. She went last year. I haven't gone. But, you know, that was like, I don't know, it was almost $40 a ticket, I think. And there's five or six of us going, right? So things like that, things like we tend to eat out more during the holidays, you know, factor that in any travel expenses. That goes without saying, right? Obviously, we always usually pay for a hotel and flights or your car. But there's so many other things that when you're traveling, you have those expenses. Food and drink. If you're going out, any charitable giving before the end of the year, it's good to make sure you have that and any miscellaneous expenses. And again, you know, those could be for gifts or maybe you're going to go do some sort of, you know, Hank friendsgiving, like with your friends, and you're going to go out and something. Those are all things to just make sure you factor into your holiday budget because you don't want to be surprised and you don't want to be upset in January and you're like, oh, my gosh, how much did I spend? Or if you're putting stuff on credit cards, it's just, you don't need to do that. So just be really careful and write everything down. If you haven't already, write it down. And I do have a template that you can use to try to put your budget together. So I'll give you that bonus that downloaded. Just a second. So here's some exchanges. Do you guys put in the chat. Do you guys do any exchanges with any family or friends or work or anything like that? Do you guys do any. See, just type it in the chat box. Oh, yeah. That's so cute. Let's see. I love that. That's great that you do that. So you have a family. You. You draw names. You buy for one adult and one. And the kids. That's so great. Just regular. Mostly the grandkids, kids on my side and we draw names. Love that. I mean, it sounds like you guys are already doing it, so that's so great. We actually have not been doing that as much, but so. So I have three sisters and so all of our kids. For the four girls, all of our kids, they actually get together and coordinate a gift exchange, a Secret Santa. And I really give them a lot of credit and it's. It's kind of fun to watch them shop for each other, but I think it's really smart that they do that. But we don't do it at our level for whatever reason we should. So. So the, the most that here are the most common ones. You have your Secret Santa, you have your white elephant. You have, you know, homemade gift exchange, charity gift exchange, and a themed gift exchange. We'll go through each one of those. Now, you guys probably know what the Secret Santa is. Let me just move this around here. So it's in my way. Okay, there we go. So Secret Santa. You guys probably know what that is, right? Each participant, you put everybody's name into a hat. Or you could go to drawnames.com that's what the kids use. And that way you don't have to be in the same place. And you can draw names electronically. So if you haven't done that, that's kind of cool. But basically everybody's name goes into a hat. And then everybody draws and you get one person to buy for. Generally, you set a price limit for the gifts. You make sure everyone stays in the budget. And it is always fun trying to get people. They always wrote me into helping like wrap things or write out cards so people don't recognize handwriting. But it is fun to try to keep it secret. And. And then you obviously what. What we will generally do is everybody will take them and put them into a common area, but you can't see who brought them in. And then they open them and they get to guess who it is. That's always fun. But it's a nice way to keep the cost, still be part of the whole gift giving. All my parents asked for is a picture calendar. I love that. And Shutterfly. So great. That is awesome. And can you imagine if you keep one? Hopefully you keep one for yourself. You keep a calendar that you make as you give as a gift, but of your kids. But I guess probably you too, right? So if you keep one for yourself and you'll have one for every year, it's so fun to look back on. I love that idea. Okay, so Secret Santa, white elephant. You guys probably ball done. White elephant. Usually you'll see these at work parties and things like that where everybody brings a gift with some sort of budget. Usually, you know, 10, $20. And everyone takes turns you. So one person will open it and then the next person can either pick from the unwrapped gifts or they can steal the one that somebody has already opened and chosen. Right. So that's kind of fun. Everybody gets kind of crazy. But it's a good, you know, interactive, enjoyable to do that. And again, it's usually not super expensive. The gifts. And some of them can be almost be gag gifts. Some of them can be useful and as it says, it can be competitive and funny. So that's a fun one to do, actually. And it helps, you know, it's kind of part of the entertainment. Homemade gifts that's always fun to do is to make sure you make things, especially if you have a Talent. If you like to cook. If you. My daughter can paint, and she'll make her friends, like, little. Even just little tiny, to get little canvases from Michael's, and she'll, you know, paint their pet or something like that. It's really cute. But there's so many different handmade options. You can make jewelry, you can make cards, you can paint rocks, you know, get your kids involved. And it definitely is something where you can be creative and you can save money doing it. And, you know, people will really enjoy it and they'll treasure it. So I definitely love this one, this option, especially from the kids. Another thing that people do is that instead of buying gifts, people choose charities so that people can still buy for you, but what they're doing is basically giving to a charity. So that one is really nice. I've seen a couple of people do that. And it's a good way to give back, but it's a good way to give a gift, but also give to something that's, you know, important to that particular person, whatever cause it is, right? It could be breast cancer. It could be part parks, you know, your national parks. It could be shelters. It could be anything, right? Whatever they're interested in. So you would need to ask them, you know, what charity would you like me to give to in your name? And they could give that to you. So that's a fun one to do. Oh, I like that. That is awesome. Sheila. I like that idea. I think that's good. And I think if you organize things early enough, you can do that. Like, if you wait too long, that's like, half the people have already bought gifts. And then it gets complicated. But if you do that now and just say, hey, everybody, let's together and do one of these exchanges, I think it's a great way to do it. And if you all have a common cause, that would be awesome. Like, next week, I'm walking 60 miles in San Diego for breast cancer, right? That's what we are all doing. We're all. We all donated to breast cancer, had two sisters, recently had breast cancer, and so we're doing that. That's where all of our charity money went. And everybody got together as family. We're all doing the same cause, so it's fun to do that kind of stuff. And then themed gifts. This is also fun. I've seen people do, you know, like, you pick a theme, you can pick movies, or you can pick, you know, like, travel or things like that. So whatever's of interest, you'd have to find Something that the group that you're buying with, that you're doing exchange with all kind of have a shared, you know, interest. So that might be difficult. You know, there's books. It could be certain things. So that one. This one's a little bit. May take a little bit more interesting. Like, I mean, if you have like a team, you know, that might be good to do, which could be you have a soccer team or maybe you have a hiking club, maybe you buy a theme for that kind of stuff, that would be kind of fun to do. So this one might take some more organizing and more thought, but it's kind of fun and it'll be interesting to see what everybody gets. Let's see. Love the white elephant. Yes, it is good in the To. To do the gag is like, I've even seen people put like a can of beans or a roll of toilet paper, right? And then you'll see somebody else has got a yeti in there, Right? So it could be really mixed up. Yeah, that's such a great little gnomes. That is so great. Great ideas. Love that. Okay, so low or no cost gifts, I'm. There's a couple things that I'm always pushing people. So definitely the homemade gifts. And under homemade gifts, I would definitely tell you that I know so many people, parents and grandparents, that would love to get your kids artwork that they made at school that you don't have enough room for that. Like, if you pick your favorites and then set the rest aside and use those as gifts. Grandparents love it. And, you know, aunts and uncles, they love to get your kids artwork. And you don't even really have to do anything. Or you can just sit down and have them make some artwork specifically for that person. But you could even repurpose stuff that they've made at school. So that is something I'd love to do. You can also use their artwork as gift wrap. Free family members too. So that's fun. That way it's not cluttering up your house. Because I know a lot of people really are challenged with. Did I forget to. To record you guys? Oh, good. I didn't. I thought I did. G. I'm always worried, you guys, that I forgot to record. Okay, hold on here. So it's saying that you can wrap gifts. Oh. So what I was saying was that a lot of people have a hard time because they have just too much paper, too much clutter, too much stuff comes from school. But if you can, throughout the year, set things aside and give them away as gifts, people Love it. Digital gifts. You can make things online. You can do poems, you can do, you can write many books, you can create digital crafts online. There's a lot of digital things that you can get that can be really inexpensive or not cost anything. It's just your time to make it Acts of service, you know, offer, you know, you want to get your neighbor something, offer to walk their dog once a week, right? Or your kids can offer. Or your kids can do that for the grandparents or you can offer babysitting for a young couple maybe in your neighborhood or something like that. So acts of service are things that you can do with just that just cost your time and it's really valued and it's something that you can give them little mini get, you can create little coupon book for or something like that. Don't underestimate how much people will appreciate that experiences. So I know that's becoming really popular where people are giving away experiences. Instead of like maybe toys, they're getting kids like passes for zoos or museums or, or water parks or things like that. So that's another thing that's a really good gift and you can potentially get them low cost, especially around Black Friday. Personalized gifts. Book exchange. I think that is so fun if you. But you'd have to have the right group of people that you're giving gifts to to do a book book exchange. I was trying to talk my daughter into this one because they like to read a lot of the same books, her and her friends. It'd be fun to do a book exchange, but she wasn't super excited about that. But I think there are people who would like to do a book exchange. Same with getting gifts like giving plant cuttings or seeds. I know there's a lot of people, if you have a special gardener in your life, they might like that. Subscriptions or free services, any sort of skill or knowledge sharing. I gave my mom a one year subscription to Skillshare and basically with that she can do iPhone photography classes. You know, she already knows how to knit and crochet. She's very crafty. But anything she wanted to learn, if there's any sort of, you know, thing on her Mac she wants to learn, she could take a class. So I gave her something like that versus getting her something she really doesn't have room for. And then charitable donations, that's another thing that can be low cost as well. So okay, what are you guys Hand. Handmade cookies? Yes. Though you know, sometimes baking can be expensive. So you got to be careful with that, oh, and I love that. Especially if people, you have something special that you make and people ask for it for the holidays, they will be so excited when you walk in the door. My aunt makes these like it's just a plate. She'll have some sort of like holiday plate and then it'll be wrapped in the fancy plastic. But she makes all these treats. And I know my husband always says, well, the holidays have started when her, when her gift basket arrives lives. He says, holidays have definitely started. So I love that. And I love that you make strawberry white chocolate cake cookies. That sounds amazing. That sounds so good. Let's see. Okay, now, opting out of gift exchanges. I know people have asked about that and my biggest, my biggest tip to you is just to communicate in advance. Make sure people know if you just don't have the money, you don't have the desire, you don't want to be part of it. You need to just let them know. Sometimes what you can do is instead of maybe participating, you could still be involved, involved by helping coordinate or you can volunteer somehow or you can make something homemade. But I really would just emphasize you should just let people know in advance and let them know in as much advance as possible. So that's definitely a good thing. Do you guys have any other suggestions on how to gracefully opt out of different exchange exchanges or giving gifts? Anything work for you guys? No, nothing specific. Yeah, communication is key. Yes, I totally agree. So, okay, let's see what's next. Okay, so here's an example of some of the handouts I'm going to give you. So the first one is my gifting with ease. So I've got a bunch of, you know, things to consider when you're budgeting. I have a template inside the PDF that has the list of the different things that it shows you, some like examples on how to set up your budget and then a template for you to do that. Here's a bunch of ideas, a little bit about what I talked about, low and no cost gifts. And then here's the thing on the gift exchanges. So that's one, that's one of the downloads. And then the other one is a gift guide. And again, like I said, I've got gifts kind of categorized and they're just things that I thought of or that I know that others have enjoyed getting or they might be popular right now for the teens and things like that. None of these things are too expensive. Maybe the most expensive are the ones for the organizer because there's a cricut on There the Cricut joy. If you guys don't have one. I love my cricut joy. In fact, I was doing some work for a client just the other day and I didn't take my big cricket. I just took my cricut joy, did a bunch of labeling. I was redoing her pantry. So I love my cricut joy, but I also love my label printer too. This guy over here, it's the one that I do my QR codes with. So much fun. So anyhow, I have a gift guide that has all that with links. And it might just maybe you may not want to want one of those things. Exactly. But it'll help. It'll help, help, help you think of gifts if you are buying for someone. Okay, any questions? Do you guys have any questions so far? While you're getting your questions, let me grab the links and I'll put them in there. But let me know if you have any questions. Okay, so here's the gifting with ease document and here's the gift guide. Any questions, guys? Okay, there we go. I'll also link those when I send out the replay. One thing that's happened, there was some problem with the email. A bunch of email got stuck with my email provider. So if you got day three today, I'm sorry, I didn't know it, but about. There was a certain number of people that got that their day three didn't deliver for. So I put a work order in with my email provider and they said something was wrong, so they pushed it. And then everybody got day three's email today. So they got day three and day four from yesterday. So sorry about that if you haven't been getting them, but I'll let me know if that does happen. Yes, that's such a great idea. Let's meet for lunch or coffee. Yes. That is so great. And you know, the other thing that's nice about that is, you know, right now everybody's busy. There's so many school things going on and work, holiday work events, you know, and there's just people getting together, planning meals. Like, we actually have our Thanksgiving tomorrow. It's really early for a couple of reasons. Usually it's a Saturday before, but it's a little bit earlier because we're traveling for that breast cancer event that is next weekend. So normally our Thanksgiving would be next weekend, the Saturday before, but it's actually tomorrow. So. But people are just busy. So I. The thing I like about that is you can always, you know, plan it for January or like you Said February, but you just got to hold yourself to it. Don't like you gotta, you gotta actually pick a date, you know, so other. Because if you don't pick a date now, then you might get to February where I get kind of lose sight of it. I have some people who, who will do friendsgiving. I've never done that. It's my daughter in law, she, she likes to do that with her friends. And if they, they keep trying dates and they keep pushing, they'll do, they, they stay on it and if they have to, they do friendsgiving in December. But they're really good about making sure they stick to it and they actually get together, which I absolutely love. That's because it's fun to do that stuff. So I like that idea. Just pick a date and schedule it. Okay, so here's the secret phrase. Hopefully you guys can't see this thing. Gift giving with ease. That's the fifth one I hope. Have you guys been, you guys been keeping track of them? Good. Yay. I'm so happy. Yes. I'm so glad. And then yesterday I can forgot, I forgot to go to the last screen so I had to just pop that into the replay. So, so sorry about that. You know, sometimes I think those things happen. I'm, I'm actually working at the same time as doing this challenge, so it's hard. But I've, I've enjoyed doing this. If you guys have any questions, I'll continue to pop things into the Facebook group. I think all of you guys are active on Facebook group. Some people just will only do the emails. They just don't like being in Facebook. I'm not a super fan of Facebook but I do like these kind of groups. But I'll stay active in there and answer any questions. And like I said, you guys, I, if you have any decluttering needs, you need help for getting ready for the holidays, pop a question in the Facebook group or you can even email me, that's fine too. That's what I do. I coach people on how to get past, get past, you know, being, having declutter and just feeling overwhelmed by clutter. And you know, we work through it, we find solutions, we find systems for people. They also help people get organized. So if you guys have any questions, I'm happy to do that. I'm happy to help you. Anyway, so just put it in the Facebook group or DM me or send me an email. I'd love to, I'd love to help you. So. Okay, I will just say last call for Any questions? If not, I'll let you guys go. I know it's Friday and this has been a lot of fun and I hope all this content helps you and helps you guys get a little bit ahead and start really thinking about things so that you are more organized this year and you finish out and then next year in January. So next year when you start, maybe you get a new planner. I don't know about you, but I love it when it's time to get a new planner. I already have mine. But, you know, starting next month, I will start, you know, putting things in there for 2024 and just make sure that you think about 2024 next year. Start jotting in some things now for October, November and December so that you can get on top of all of these things and start even earlier next year year. So that's a really good idea if you guys have time to do it. If not, do it in January. But. All right, you guys, that's it. Oh, somebody. Some more questions. Okay. All right. Love it. Make your plans and also see still see you guys in the Facebook group. Thank you for coming today. Talk to you later. Bye.