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Laundry basket keeps holiday gifts contained

in: Holidays & Special Occasions, Organizing Time & Space

Here’s Kirsten’s tip for for the inevitable chaos after the presents have been unwrapped:

The laundry basket hack reminded me of this one – we get out a laundry basket for each child on Christmas morning. After they unwrap each gift (and examine/play with it) the toy/book/THING WITH TINY PIECES THAT MIGHT GET LOST goes into their own basket. Later, when one of the kids asks ‘Where’s my pony’s brush?’ or ‘Which is mine, and which is his?’ we just point them at their own basket. We’ve done this for the past two years, and it’s worked great. We’ll definitely be continuing this organizing ‘tradition’! 🙂

Tags: Christmas, Getting organized, Holidays, Parenting

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About Asha Dornfest

Asha Dornfest is a writer, parent, and insistent optimist living in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of PARENT HACKS, co-author of MINIMALIST PARENTING, and co-host of the Edit Your Life podcast.

Comments

  1. sodium says

    December 22, 2006 at 11:52 am

    little pieces will probably fall through the holes in the laundry basket pictured above. Get one that is solid all around.

  2. AnnMarie Johnson says

    December 22, 2006 at 12:25 pm

    I wonder if my grandmother did this–she had 14 kids! I remember some Christmases at their house when I was little (I was only 10 years younger than the youngest aunt). I don’t know how we all fit in the living room to open gifts! sometimes, missed gifts would be found days later because they’d been tucked in a corner. LOL Given how close in age many of the kids were, I have no idea how they kept track of everything….

    We won’t need to use one however–all the gifts for our family of 3 would fit in one laundry basket. Maybe even while still in their packages.

  3. Parent Hacks Editor says

    December 22, 2006 at 1:11 pm

    sodium: Excellent observation! Hence new graphic!

  4. momma2mingbu says

    December 22, 2006 at 2:31 pm

    My amazing mother in law gives ALL TEN of her grandchildren an Advent box at Thanksgiving each year. It contains a small gift for every day from 12/1 to 12/24. (10 kids x 24 gifts = 240 gifts that she wraps and labels!)

    The box that contains them is always a brand new plastic storage container (think Rubbermaid and Sterilite). So each Christmas I have three empty plastic containers, already labeled with their names, waiting by the tree for them to put their smaller gifts/things with a million pieces into.

    Their boxes this year –
    http://the5dollars.blogspot.com/2006/12/on-2nd-day-of-advent-my-grandma-gave-to.html

  5. kittenpie says

    December 23, 2006 at 3:13 pm

    We do this too with cardboard boxes – and it sure helps make the thank you cards easier, too!

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About the Author

Asha Dornfest is an author, optimist, and mom of two. She started the Parent Hacks blog in 2005, and turned it into a book in 2016. More about Asha »

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