Ashley Home Furniture Credit Card

hi, everyone. it's alejandra from home organizing.and i hope you're having a wonderful holiday season. a lot of people have been asking mequestions on how to stay organized during the holiday season. and so, i figured i wouldjust do a video and show you guys a system that i use during the month of december tostay organized and stay on top of things. and let me show you or let me give you a sneakpeek of what the system looks like. it's a binder. it's a one and a half inchbinder and it has everything i need to make sure that i send out cards on time, make surei buy all my gifts on time, make sure i mail them on time, make sure i send out my thankyou cards. it's basically everything i need for like gift-giving to friends and family.

so before i get started and show you the systemand what it looks like and how to get the same look inside of your house, i just wantto say that this video is part of a youtube playlist that myself and five other youtubepartners have put together to bring you holiday tips this holiday season. so at the end ofthis video, i'm going to post links to their channel. you can subscribe to their channeland watch their tips. so let me grab the camera and show you guysexactly what my system looks like. ok. so this is the outside of my holiday binder.i'm going to show you inside in just a second. but basically, it's a one and a half inchbinder from staples. it's the staples brand binders, the better binder. i always talkabout these binders in my videos. they are

my favorite. i love how they come in like15 different colors and i love how they have a little window on the side so you can writea label and i wrote this in red because it's christmas and the binder is green becauseagain, it's christmas. and then i just put a scrapbook paper in the very front of thebinder to make it even more christmassy. all right. so let me show you inside. ok.so the first document inside of my holiday binder is my holiday checklist. now, thisis the most important document inside of the binder because it's going to tell you everybodythat you need to send a card gift and stocking stuffer to. so basically what i did was icreated this checklist from excel and then i just printed it and put it inside this binder.and i listed all of my family and friends

in the first column right here. and because this is going to be on video onyoutube, i created fake family members and friends because i just felt uncomfortableputting the real names down. so these were all fake friends here. but once i createdthe list of friends that i'm going to send thanks to then i created a card column whichis the second column here and i made little checkboxes so i can just check off the boxonce i send or once i write out the person's holiday card. ok. so what i did here was i kind of groupedpeople in groups of five and i put a red box around them because i'm only going to wantto write five holiday cards per day. if i

write like ten holiday cards per day, my handwritingstarts to get sloppy and then i don't really want to send out a sloppy holiday card. soi figured if i just do five a day for 8 or 9 days, then at the end of 8 or 9 days, ihave sent out 45 really neat and organized holiday cards. so yeah, so you can just seethe dates right here. this is starting on december 1st. i sent out five cards. december2nd, another five cards and so forth every single day. and then something else i did was most ofmy family and friends celebrate christmas with the exception of some of my friends celebratehanukkah. so what i did here was i put a little star of david symbol by my friends that celebratehanukkah so when i'm writing all the holiday

cards, i know to send them a hanukkah cardand not a christmas card. and then the next column here is the giftcolumn. so i went through my list of family and friends and i said, "who am i going tosend a card to and give a gift to? or who am i going to send a card to and not givea gift to?" so the people that are going to receive a gift, they have a white checkboxhere so i can just check off whenever i buy them a gift. and then the people that i'mjust going to send a card to and not a gift to, i shaded their box in black before i printedit so i know that i don't need to buy them a gift. and then the same thing with the stockingcolumn here, anybody that i'm going to get

a stocking stuffer for, i left the box whiteso i can just check off when i get their stocking stuffer. and then anybody who's not goingto get a stocking stuffer has a black box here. and then the next column here is the deadlinefor the gift. so when do i need to buy and send their gift by? so, not everybody thati'm giving a gift to i'm going to see in person. like for example, like debbie and anthonyeveman. ok. that sounds so silly because that's not a real person but like for example, ineed to send their gift by december 20th because i'm mailing their gift and i want it to getthere on christmas or before christmas. so that's why they have december 20th.

but for example, december 10th here, likei'm going to see danny philips and carol philips which i'm not really going to see but i'mgoing to see my pretend friends on december 10th so i need to get their gift before then.and then everybody with the december 23rd deadline, i'm going to see either on christmaseve or christmas day. and then the next column here is the giftideas column. so i pretty much knew what i was going to buy everybody when i printedout this checklist so i just typed out what i'm going to get them before printing it.but if you don't know what you're going to get them then you could just leave this emptyand then you can just fill it in as you come up with the ideas. if that's the case, youprobably want to create like a bigger cell

or more room to write because this is nota lot of room to write if you're just going to handwrite it. ok. so that's gift ideas. and then the lastcolumn here is the thank you card. so after christmas, you want to send thank you cardsto everybody who got you a gift or gave you something nice or whatever. so of course,i don't know who is going to give me a gift yet so everybody has a checkbox column andafter christmas i'll just go through. and i'll just write a checkmark if they gave mea gift and i sent them a thank you card. so again, i just created this checklist inexcel. i feel like this is a life-saver. this is going to keep me organized throughout themonth of december because i'm going to know

exactly who i've sent cards to, who i've sentgifts to, and who i haven't. and one more thing that i kind of thoughtof that is not included here is to create a budget column like maybe the last columnhere so you can kind of budget. put like a limit to how much you spend for each person'sgift. so if it's like $25 or if it's $50, you can just include that in the last columnhere. ok. so that is my holiday checklist. oh, andjust one more thing here. at the bottom of the checklist, you can see that i'm goingto send out all of my cards on december 9th or i'm scheduled to finish writing all myholiday cards on december 9th. and once i finished writing them then i can just stickthem all in the mail together and i'll just

go through and i'll double check that everybodyhas a card waiting for them and then i'll stick it in the mail. so that's my holiday checklist. if you guyswant to use the same checklist, i will put a link at the bottom of this video where youcan download this for free on my website and you can just change out the names and changeout all the information and make it yours so you can stay organized this holiday season. ok. so now that i've done my holiday checklist,i'm going to show you what else is in this binder. so the first section here is my stickersection which is kind of like stickers and stamps. it has all of the stamps in the firstsection. these are just 4 x 6 photo pages

that i got from office depot and i just putall my stamps in here and i have hanukkah stamps and i have christmas stamps. they'reall forever stamps so i can use them next year when i'm writing more holiday cards becausethis is more stamps than i actually need. then the next section here is all of my stickersto close the envelopes. and i use - i put them in sheet protectors just like this. theseare the sheet protectors that have a little flap at the very top so when you turn thepage, nothing is going to fall out. ok. so yes, these are stickers that you use to closeenvelopes to keep these nice and protected in the sheet protectors so nothing gets wrinkled. and then the next set of stickers, these aretags for holiday gifts. these are in another

sheet protector. then the next section is all of my holidaypaper. so this is holiday paper for writing like a christmas letter or a recipe if yougo to a cookie exchange. i feel like i always use this paper for some kind of holiday noteor something. so i thought it would be convenient to keep it inside this binder. so i have twokinds here. there's this kind, "wishing you a year's joy this holiday season." and thenthere is, "celebrate the season." in the next section here, i have all of myaddress labels. so the very first set of address labels is my return address label that i willput on all my holiday cards. and i like to type them up instead of handwrite them becauseit's just like extra effort handwriting when

you're handwriting all your return addresslabels and all your address labels. so if you type them, you could just reuse them yearafter year. so yeah, so that's just a way to save time and be more efficient. and then in this section here is where i'mgoing to print out all of my addresses for all my friends and family. i don't want toinclude these addresses here because obviously, i'm not going to create fake addresses andprint them because i felt like that was a waste of paper. but yeah, i'm going to writemy friends and family address labels here. and then the next section has all of my tags.i felt like i wasn't sure if i was going to include this in this binder. like these wereall these gift tags right here. but i felt

like this is the perfect way to keep themfrom getting damaged and keep them organized. so i just put them inside of these baseballcard sleeves and then i just stuck them in the binder. these are really cute. i got themfrom target this year. i just thought they are really cute. and then the next section here, i have a gussetedbinder pocket that i showed you guys in my warranty and manual binder. i got this fromstaples. it's a binder pocket that goes inside of a binder that has a nice velcro clasp.and i use this to store all my holiday receipts. so every time i buy somebody a gift, i'm goingto put their receipt in here and at the top of the receipt, i'm going to put their nameso i know who the gift went to.

so i'm going to use this for budgeting purposeslike if i'm going to add up all my gift receipts at the end of the holiday seasons to knowhow much i spent or how much i've spent so far to know if i'm on budget. yeah, i'll savethe receipts or if somebody needs the original receipt for a return or an exchange. if agift receipt is not available then it's good to always have the original receipt. and then i'll go ahead and i'll get rid ofthese receipts in january or after the holiday season if i no longer need them. if it's somethingthat i might need or the person might need then i'll keep it maybe for another week ortwo and then i'll just get rid of it. but yeah, it's a good place to keep all your holidayreceipts.

and then the last section of the binder iswhere i have all of my holiday cards. i use another gusseted binder pocket from staplesto keep all my holiday cards nice, neat, organize and not bent or damaged. and then wheneveri'm writing my holiday cards, i'll take them out and then just start writing them and thenput them back in. and something else that i meant to put inhere that i haven't yet are my thank you cards. and i actually have not bought my thank youholiday cards yet. but when i get them, i'm going to put them inside of this binder. ok. so one more thing that i want to showyou guys in the binder is the dividers that i used. so i kind of had to search for certainkind of dividers because as you can see here,

most dividers are not going to go past thesesheet protectors that you get from office supplies stores because they're extra wide.so i found dividers that had little tabs at the very top of the divider so i was ableto just get these and put them at the top instead of at the side because if i put themat the side, you can see right here that you won't be able to see them because the sheetprotectors are in the way. so yeah, so they go at the very top. these are from staples.they are staples brand and i forget how much they were but you can get them on staples.com. and then i decided to use a red font on awhite label because it matched the green binder for christmas and i just thought it was niceand appropriate.

ok. so that's the system that i use for themonth of december to stay organized leading up to the holidays. i hope these tips werehelpful if you decide to set up a binder inside of your house for december. it's super easyto set up. it's just a matter of gathering the supplies, putting it together in one binder,making your checklist, deciding who you're going to send cards to, deciding who you'regoing to give gifts to, and just tracking your progress as you go along so you knowwhat you've accomplished and what you still have left to do in order to get everythingdone in time for the holidays. so again, i hope these tips were helpful andi hope you have a great holiday season. and i will see you soon. bye!5

Ashley Home Furniture Credit Card