Organizing Gift Bags

I just got to the end of putting away all the left over Christmas gift bags, etc.  Don't you hate it when you go to use a bag, whether it's from Christmas or a birthday, Easter, Valentine's Day, or whatever and you don't know if you can give it to "said" person in fear that THEY might have given you the bag that you're about to give BACK to them?  Yeah, me too.  Here's what I do to keep all these miscellaneous gift toting sacks organized:

Label!! With sticky notes, I put the year (or occasion) it was received, who gave it, and if need be, to whom it was given on the top, inside of the bag.

If the bag came with a tag on it, I'll leave it there until next time so I know who it came from, but I will still label the year.

If it's a brand new bag, and I might forget that, I'll label it as such. Actually, this one I wouldn't have had to because, on it, still appears the clear hook tab used for display at the store. Take them off before giving a gift! Please!!

On to storing the bags for future use.... If you have enough gift wrapping paraphernalia to start your own store like I do, this gets really important. I have mine categorized according to holiday/occasion and then stored (thank goodness they can be flattened!) in large shopping bags.

Here's my stash of Christmas bags.

These are categorized by baby, birthday, wedding, various holidays and nondescript.

Now,  if only a little fairy would come and fix up the rest of my house so it would be equally as organized!  (Just a little hint as to what I'll be working on in 2011.....  turning into a fairy.  Either that or organizing, one of the two.)

5-Year Planner

I am slightly offended by the amount of time into the future that dentists, and now hairdressers seem to want to book their appointments. No, I can't say that Tuesday, August 3rd at 8:30am will be free for me. My GOSH! That's 6-months from now. Maybe it's just the ever-changing stages, schedules, and lives that kids have that make parents' schedules tough to anticipate.

There are, however, things in the semi-distant future that I do have to plan for. For example, I didn't want to forget to tour preschools for M. for next fall at the proper time. We'll be having a garage sale some weekend during the spring, but I don't know exactly when. And, at some point I'd like to have Lasik surgery. So, you can see that there are certain things that I want to have on the radar screen, but can't quite commit to a particular date on the calendar yet. I got sick of attempting to move the many sticky notes around on my schedule, so I asked Ty for some help. I gave him the general idea, and my standard request of "make it pretty". This is what he devised for me. Thanks to my in-house computer guy yet again!



Feel free to use this Excel template for your own personal use, but if you blog about it, please link back to me, ok? You will be able to alter the size of the columns and rows according to your needs. Right now we have December in its own column because things tend to be so busy around the holidays. I was also using December's column for keeping track of gift ideas & purchases. If you'd like a spreadsheet for just gift-giving and birthday lists, let me know & we can probably help you out.

Now look at you, all prepared and stuff! :o)