It’s so funny that when you are an organizer you naturally come up with a system for everything.  This time I came up with a system for organizing our Christmas presents. I’m not talking about the lists I have for each person I’m shopping for or the Wunderlist I’ve created for store by store shopping.  I’m talking about keeping track of what present is for what family after it’s been wrapped and tagged.  If you’re anything like our family we celebrate with friends and family on a different day than we open our immediate family gifts.  And you don’t want to show up at Aunt Sally’s house and have forgotten grandma’s gift.  So I started a system of sorting our holiday gifts.

First we have our Christmas tree and underneath are all the presents for our family of five.  This is pretty standard.  We give the children four gifts (sometimes each category has more than 4 things)….something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read (definitely a pile of books in each of those something to read boxes).  They buy a gift for each other and then there are some presents under there for me and the Mister.

Then we have these great built ins in our dining space and i place the presents for others up on top.  Someone asked if these were just decorations.  But no, for me everything is utilitarian.  This way the presents are enjoyed and offer a bit of decoration while being out of the way and also not getting left behind when we head to a family celebration.  It’s really just a simple sort but it offers multiple benefits.

Do you have a system for organizing all the presents before it’s gift giving time.