Planner Tip: The Folded Gift List

I'm late with today's blog. It's because I spent the whole weekend Christmas shopping! This elf is tired, but the shopping is almost done.

The worse part of shopping this year is combining in the store shopping by my husband and me with Amazon shopping by my husband. Keeping track of who is buying what, what is bought, how it's getting here, what is wrapped, do the boys have an equal number of gifts, etc. is OVERWHELMING.

My planner helps, but the list in there got crazy and crowded and was not working.

So I recopied it onto a two page spread, but first I had to make columns to check off items bought and items wrapped.

I didn't have graph paper handy, so I improvised.

I folded the paper (lining up edges equally) to make columns.

Once I did that, I recopied the list, neatly. I used the following codes, borrowed from the codes that I normally use for task lists:

*check mark = bought
*circle = to buy (an idea borrowed from my task list circles)
*@AMB = my husband will order/buy (again, @ is pending on my task list)
*@AMAZ = ordered and waiting on Amazon to deliver

Also, again echoing my task lists, I highlighted those things that have been bought or ordered, so the rest would jump out at me.

By using the planner techniques that I already use daily, the list started to make sense to me. Mischief managed!

Etcetera.