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Track Purchases with the Holiday Gift List Worksheet
Posted by Gina Trapani at 1:00 PM on December 11, 2007
Ok elves, it's T minus 15 days till your bag o' presents is supposed to be wrapped and under the tree. To help you brainstorm, gather, and wrap the goods, Real Simple magazine offers holiday gift list worksheet as a PDF download. This is just a simple list with lines to fill in each person's name, the gift idea, and checkboxes to mark whether you've purchased, received, and/or gift-wrapped it. If printing's not your thing and you'd like to track your holiday spending as well, make yourself a spreadsheet with an additional column for cost, totaled at the end.
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hector7g
Posted 10:37 PM 10/12/07
I'm so glad I don't enough recipients to shop for to actually need this.
hector7g
leliathomas
Posted 12:30 AM 11/12/07
My grandmother is the ultimate gift giver, and she's been doing this, in pen and paper style, for all my life (since she won't even touch a keyboard or mouse). She goes the extra mile and holds last year's list so she can make sure, each year, that she doesn't give someone something too similar to what they received the year before. (E.g., Daniel gets a red shirt for Christmas 2006; he might get another shirt for 2007, but it will definitely be blue.) Talk about obsessive, I know!
leliathomas
zarathustra
Posted 2:32 AM 11/12/07
@KCBLUEGAL. I think you just summed up everything I hate about Xmas in one paragraph. Are you serious, or was that tongue-in-cheek?
zarathustra
KCBlueGal
Posted 2:13 AM 11/12/07
I do this in an Excel Spreadsheet, complete with total tracking and Merchant category (so I can remember from where I got the gift). I keep it in its assigned folder so I can refer to the list the following year. Last year's spreadsheet came in handy when I was trying to come up with ideas for this year's Secret Santas.
And helped me realize that I saved nearly $300 by really trying hard to find the best deals this year (and finding coupons) instead of just purchasing things online willy-nilly.
KCBlueGal
JFitzpatrick
Posted 9:03 AM 11/12/07
I've been doing this by hand the holiday, writing the list a few times. This is really -cute- for lack of a better word. Although I think I'm going to take a cue from KCBluelegal above and use a spreadsheet. It isn't, as zaratrhrustra might imply, that I'm a corrupt capitalist machine ;-) but that I know the people I shop for very well... to the point of having accidently purchased the same very specific book for them two years in a row having forgotten that I gave it to them previously and said to myself "He would -love- this book!" I could stand for a better tracking method =)
JFitzpatrick
Slackferno
Posted 9:51 AM 11/12/07
I use a spreadsheet too. Been doing it since 2001, and each year is a new sheet in the workbook. I can see what I got for whom, when, where, and how much was spent. I can even link their online wish lists for easier shopping. This year I loaded it into Google Docs so I have easy access to it from home, the office, or even my phone.
Slackferno