Eileen,

You color codong is pure genius. An alternative of course (and I am not Scrooging) is fewer gifts overall, but I do so love to give people things. For me, I also insist on the randomness of paper. I have a huge built-in drawer (old house) with many rolls of paper. So we're kind of stuck with confusion, but we are few in number.

Ad then, I can't imagine having five of anything in my house. Well, except books and other things that don't breathe or squawk. (Like plants: I have proved to myself I am able to keep them alive and healthy, but usually at the cost of neglecting something else. If it doesn't move or speak, it doesn't get my attention.).

As for gifts, well, I have often not found something bought long since.

My one contribution to this thread is this: I have on my PDA a little application called "Where Is It?" which allows me to record in several categories where I put things. This could also be done in a notebook, or I'd probably use a word pad doc on my computer desktop, because it needs to be handy. I have a Gift category, among many others like "AAA Batteries," "Techno-Gizmo (which is all the extra wires and chips and flash drives one accumulates)," "Ich-Blech (which refers to a bunch of things yet to be disbursed anong my sibs that belonged to my now-dead mother)," and others..

Betsy

Eileen Bailey

12/20/07 9:19pm

 

Betsy

Thanks for your comments. I am glad you found this useful, if not for your situation. As for my children, 3 are older and I don't  often have them all in the house at the same time anymore, and if so the older ones just don't get many gifts, they would prefer more practical things, like cash!

 

But when they were all younger this worked great and I still use it for the two youngest that are still at home.

 

I hope others can put it to use.

 

Eileen