This means, of course, that I needed to get my Amazon orders in today. Even then, one of my items would not ship before Christmas. Oops. It was unimportant, so I switched it for something else. With that last order this morning and a marathon shopping session yesterday, I am all done except for a few gift cards.
I don't do many gift cards. I prefer to get actual gifts for people that show that I was thoughtful. I make three exceptions:
1. Gifts for teenagers and college students. They actually appreciate gift cards or cash since they don't usually have much money.
2. Gift experiences. I will give a gift card with a physical gift for a teacher to get coffee or go out to a restaurant. Or I'll gift a couple in need of a break babysitting and a movie gift card.
3. Gifts that can only be given by card, like Kindle or Nook books.
That doesn't mean this final stretch - before the kids are off of school for break (that happens in 5 days) and the house guest, Grandma, arrives from out of town (in 8 days) - will be easy. It is packed with last minute errands to buy gift cards and baking supplies, cookie and fudge making (hopefully), and gift wrapping.
There is no way my little 1/8 of a 4 1/4 x 6 3/4 spread Franklin Covey compact horizontal weekly pages will capture everything that needs to be done.
Post-its to the rescue.
(Excuse the filthy table and the blur. My idea was that the blur would obscure the filth. I was wrong.)
My plan for this week is to move the Christmas project to my main pages (except for gift lists) by writing the remaining tasks on post-its assigned both a general task (wrapping, cleaning, or errands) and a day or two to complete them. This is a pretty solid deadline, since most stuff must be done by Christmas Eve and would be VERY difficult to do with the kids home from school.
I put the three lists in my planner, covering Thursday - Sunday of this week. I will move them to Monday - Wednesday (the left side) when Thursday hits if anything is not yet completed.
I put Monday's list on top, since I am doing it first. In theory, Tuesday morning I can toss the Monday list and start on Tuesdays.
As an added bonus, I can't see any list but Monday's list. That is psychologically important, as seeing a huge list of all the tasks with only a few working days left would be overwhelming.
(Also psychologically important - capturing Mouse! Where the heck is he hiding?!?)
It's also important that I still see my current week, as some things are date-specific, like making a dish for my husband's work Christmas party, and can't be written on the post-its.
Happy Christmas Crazy Week!
Etcetera.
3 comments:
All I can say is thank God for my planner yesterday. I had ordered 9 sets of pajamas for my friends' kiddos on Cyber Monday, got a huge bag from Target in the mail this week but didn't open it until yesterday when I was ready to wrap. Imagine my horror when one set of pjs was way too big and TWO were missing. Gasp! I was about to go to Target for emergency shopping (since our circle of friends was getting together for gift exchange last night). Thankfully my mom made me stop at the PO first for her and there were my other two pjs and my friend said the size I thought was too big for her daughter would be ok (I remain doubtful but Mom had spoken). Anyway all the kids are so close in age that when I ordered everything I'd written down a description of the pjs in my Christmas planner so I wouldn't be scrambling and mixing things up. As I wrapped, I made a sticky tag with the kid's name and crossed each of my list. We get together throughout the year but sometimes I have to miss outings because I work nights. In those cases, we make up birthday gifts at Christmas. So I went through my main planner to see which bdays I missed, and did that shopping yesterday. So my two planners saved me from panicking. Heros of the day, I say.
I agree with you about gift vouchers, I much prefer buying people a gift. Having said that, my son is getting money this year. He's just started university and I know that money will be much more useful to him than anything I could buy. He will still get some surprises to open up though.
You said:
"As an added bonus, I can't see any list but Monday's list. That is psychologically important, as seeing a huge list of all the tasks with only a few working days left would be overwhelming."
That's how I am, too. If I see too much, I get distracted.
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