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
little pieces will probably fall through the holes in the laundry basket pictured above. Get one that is solid all around.
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.
sodium: Excellent observation! Hence new graphic!
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
We do this too with cardboard boxes – and it sure helps make the thank you cards easier, too!