It takes planning to figure out who to buy for and what to get them for the holidays. These tips make Christmas shopping easy.
It’s after Thanksgiving, which means the holiday season is in full swing. For a lot of us, that means putting up decorations, eating as many limited edition chocolates as our stomachs can take, and doing our holiday shopping. How do you organize your holiday shopping? Do you take advantage of all of the fantastic bargains at the Black Friday sales? Are you always the person desperately shopping on Christmas Eve, or are you very organized and have all of your gifts bought in June and wrapped in July? Do you set a budget, or do you just buy what you think is perfect and worry about the damage when your credit card bill arrives?
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I take a very relaxed approach to holiday shopping. I don’t even think about it until December. Normally, it’s mid-December before I actually hit the shops. Perhaps I would start earlier if I had 20 different cousins and 8 different aunts to buy for, but I have a small family, so I don’t have a million different people to buy for.
I don’t usually write out an actual list, I just brainstorm things, or if I see something I think would make a good gift, I make a mental note of it. I usually do all of my holiday shopping in one or two trips, usually at a random time, like on a Wednesday evening. That way, I don’t have to face all of the crazy weekend shoppers.
I normally have a set amount of how much I want to spend on each person and try to stick with it because I want to try and keep things equal. As for gift wrapping, I take pride in doing it all myself and will gladly do anyone else’s. Give me a hot chocolate and a Home Alone DVD, and I’m set for the afternoon.
Tell us in the comments how you organize your holiday shopping.