I was perusing Meridith's blog today and came across this post of hers, which reminded me of a post I wrote last December. I got to thinking it is a good one to recycle this time of year and remind those of you who thought, "hey that is a good idea, I'll try it next year". Well, here it is ladies...next year. lol. I'd love to hear from you if you are going to try this method this year and then your results/review after Christmas as to how it went, how you liked it. 
It used to be that we would keep all the Christmas gifts for our children in our closet until Christmas Eve and then dear hubby and I would stay up late wrapping like crazy to get it all done AND still get a few hours sleep before the children woke up. That wasn't too bad of a system for our family when we had, say less than six children. Yet, as our family size grew, our closet stayed the same size. It became impossible to get into the closet to get to our clothes with all the gifts being "hidden" in there. With twelve children and even with trying to limit the amount of gifts, even 2-3 gifts times twelve is, well, too much for our closet to handle!
I think it was my smart hubby who came up with the solution we have been using for several years now: We wrap gifts as soon as we want, before or after the Christmas tree goes up, but instead of putting names on the gifts we use a number system. Wrap the first gift, slap a number "1" on it and on our master list that we keep hidden away till Christmas morning I write who number "1" goes to. And, so on till all the gifts are wrapped. This way, the gifts our out of our closet, are already wrapped (much less stress and more sleep Christmas Eve!) and the children do not know who's gift is who's so they are not tempted to try to "peek, shake or rattle" the gifts as they sit for weeks under the tree.
This year (edited to note: this was 2006), we put the tree up on December 4th and on the 6th hubby and I wrapped 26 gifts, which was the bulk of them, but a few more are still on the way from doing 90% of our Christmas shopping online this year (another life saver for the busy mom of twelve!).
This is also a good idea for families of any size who have kids who like to "peek", or compare how many gifts they each have under the tree ("sister has 5 and I only have 4 - waah!).
And no, we don't do Santa at our house, so there isn't any confusion as to why there are gifts under the tree before Christmas Eve.
Happy wrapping!
November 15, 2007
Tis the season....almost
at 10:16 AM
Labels: Children, Christmas, Family Life
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1 comments:
I have just recently come accross your site and let me say as a mommy to 10 I know where you come from. Iujse a lot of the same tec. at our house. I have also pickes up some new ones. We also use the numberthing at Christmas. We also Don't get up early on Christmas morning eather. We do. do the santa thing though. But from our very first childs first Christmas we have thught them that "Santa" only brings you one gift each (any one that tells you different is making that up.& its always in diffrent paper then anythinh else. This way there was no confusion about anything. The years we were able to give more we did but the years we were tight on money and they got less they didn't think it was because they did something not deserving or that Santa didn't like them. We always have a big breakfest that family & friends come for. While breakfast is cooking the kids get to open the gifts from the family & firends, and they get to open their stockings. After breakfast when the family & friends have left then we open our gifts as a family (its usuly almost noon by then) Its great because it lasts all day, its not hecktic and everone is always full of joy & sharing. It always makes for a great day.
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