It’s December, and I’m on the edge of the holiday rush. Gifts are piling up in our spare bedroom, and it feels like we’re busy every night: Christmas parties, hanging decorations, Advent services, shopping, cooking, baking. It’s lovely and it’s wonderful and I wouldn’t trade it! But boy, can it get overwhelming. I don’t know about you, but one of my stresses every year is keeping track of gifts and gift ideas. So I decided to dig in and figure out how I’m keeping track of my gift ideas this year. Maybe it will help you too!

Christmas is just around the corner, so gift ideas are fresh on my mind. But coming up with a system to organize your gift ideas will really be valuable all year. 

Picture it: your godson’s birthday rolls around next November (when you’re already feeling overwhelmed by guests coming from out of town and the added choir practices in preparation for Christmas), and you have a ready-to-go list of ideas for him as well as notes on what you gave him the last two years. The stress melts just imagining it.

Depending on how you handle gift-giving, keeping track of everything can get complicated. Here some of the hurdles I face: 

• What amount did I put on the gift card I gave to my hairdresser (pastor, mailman, coworker…) last year? 
• Did I already give this book to my daughter? 
• What size shirt does my son-in-law wear? 
• Didn’t I already buy my husband a few gifts? Where did I hide them? 

My Proposed System for Tracking Gift Ideas

I’m still experimenting with this (if you have ideas or time-tested strategies, please share!). I’ll start with some things I’ve learned do NOT work (for me, at least): 

• Writing these notes in my annual planner. Once the year is over, the planner goes into a box in the basement or the trash can, and all my careful notes for the year are gone.
• Using a post-it or a loose piece of paper with no plan or way to gather them. Again, these notes disappear before the decorations even come down. 
• Not taking any notes at all. I did this for years, counting on my memory. (At least when I wrote the notes on a post-it I was getting the memory benefit of writing it once.)

What do I think will work? A few options: 

• The Notes app on my phone (or something similar)
• A physical notebook–pretty or plain
• A binder with loose leaf paper and dividers

I’m partial to both the digital and binder approaches because they allow for a lot of flexibility. You don’t have to worry about running out of room on a page. I even created a free download for your gift tracking, perfect to print out, hole-punch, and store in a binder.

The benefit of digital? You keep your ideas in your pocket. If inspiration strikes while you’re at the gym, add the idea to your notes. Or if you just happen to run into the mall mid-November, you have a phone full of notes as your guide to start your shopping!

Here’s how I plan to organize my gift ideas this year. 

How I Plan to Track My Gift Ideas 

First, decide where you’ll keep your notes: digitally, in a notebook, or in a binder (if you like the sound of the binder, make sure you get my free downloadable gift tracker). Gather your tools. If you’re going physical, maybe grab some pretty pens and dividers, too. If you’re going digital, maybe create a folder to keep all of these notes in one spot.

Next, on the first page of your notebook/binder or in a note on your phone, list all of the people you want to give gifts to, whether it’s for their birthday or just for Christmas, write them all down. 

Now, the most straight-forward way to approach this is to create one note or one page for each person, rather than one note or page per year. (I tried that.) Then you can refer to that person’s note/page every time you want to give a gift and see the ideas you’ve captured and the gifts you’ve given them in the past whether it’s birthdays, anniversaries, or baptism celebrations. The point of this is to keep track of your gift ideas and gift-giving over the years, not necessarily to create a shopping list for this year. That can come later.

For each person, keep track of these things:

• Gift ideas. You can add to this throughout the year as you think of things they might want or need. Isn’t this the best part of gift-giving?
• Clothing sizes. You may need to update this depending on the age and life circumstances of your people, but it’s helpful to have on hand when you’re shopping. 
• What you’re planning to give them this year/what you’ve already bought them. List everything you’d like to buy this person (or have already bought them) under the year. Check things off as you buy them, and make sure you note where you’ve stored it in the meantime. 
• What you gave them in past years (If you can’t remember what you got for them last year, don’t worry! Just make sure you keep your gift list from this year in the note for years to come.)

You can group people that usually get one standardized gift every year. For example, we give gift cards from our family’s restaurant to our hairdressers, our pastor and church workers, etc. Create one note/page with the names of all of those people (don’t want to forget someone!), and lists of what I gave them each year–amounts and all. 

That note might look more like this: 

• Names and/or positions of people you’ll be gifting
• What you gave them each year

Finally, remember to use your system, whatever system you choose. Collect information throughout the year, and pull out your notes when shopping season comes around.

Tips for Finding Gift Ideas

Now that your system is in place, it’s time to use it. Of course you can always search for gift guides online (here’s mine for readers!)–they can be very helpful in finding creative, meaningful gifts for the people in your life. 

You can also use a gift formula. I’ve heard of some moms doing this with their little ones for Christmas, and I have adopted a loose structure similar to theirs. It’s called the 4-gift rule: 

1. Something they want
2. Something they need
3. Something to wear
4. Something to read

One blogger recommends the 5-gift rule, adding “Someplace to be” to the list. This could be a gift for the whole family or a special day for one child or grandchild. Basically, it’s an experience gift. 

Another blogger uses a system that allows for a little more than the 4-gift rule but still not too much–the 7-gift rule: 

1. Something you want
2. Something you need
3. Something to wear
4. Something to read
5. Something to do
6. Something for me 
7. Something for the family

If you’re curious about either the 5-gift rule or the 7-gift rule, make sure you visit those blog posts. Each blogger gives great explanations for each gift category. 

Some other tips to make your gift-giving feel effortless: 

• Keep a stock of cards–birthday, anniversary, blank–so you always have a card ready to send or accompany a gift.
• Keep wrapping paper, bags, and tissue paper on hand so you can wrap gifts in a pinch.  
• Designate one place to keep the gifts you have bought–a spare bedroom, a closet, or a secret corner of the basement, and always put the gifts you buy in advance there… at least until your children/grandchildren discover the hiding place. As kids, we knew exactly where Mom kept her 3×5 index card with gift lists. And we knew the gifts were hidden in Dad’s basement office closet. We never peeked 😉 
• Download my free gift tracker!

I hope you found some of these tips and systems helpful. Or at the very least that they sparked an idea to make your gift-giving easier and less stressful.

Pin this post for later!