Ok readers, I don’t know about you, but personally I love getting people gifts, I love carefully selecting them, watching them open it and delight in whatever I bought. And actually, I do quite like wrapping them! However, at Christmas time, this can become an overwhelming task, can’t it?! With so many people to buy for all at once, finding the time, ALONE, to wrap everything is nearly impossible.
It’s not like the world slows down at Christmas, does it? If anything, everything else ramps up a notch too. You have meals to plan, ingredients to buy, parties to attend, deadlines to meet, end of year ceremonies to sit through and travel arrangements to make. You have recipes to research and decorations to hang, and houses to clean. Laundry doesn’t stop either, nor do the day to day chores and bills, so how are you meant to find the time?
I have a solution, and it is FUN. Find someone to watch the kids, arrange to go to whoever’s house wont have spouses and children in attendance for the night and plan a good old fashioned slumber party! Or book a hotel if you have to, or even just if you want to, and you can afford it! Why not?! I know you are probably thinking you are far too old and mature for such silly things, and why would it need to be a sleepover anyway?
It needs to be a sleepover for 2 obvious and important reasons. Firstly is the wine consumption, that way there will be no limits and no drink driving! But secondly, because what you need to do, is load all the gifts into a suitcase, plus some wrapping, labels, tape, cards, ribbons and bows etc…. (and wine, obviously) and throw your pj’s on top. Everyone in the family will have questions if you leave for a dinner party with a suitcase, so this is why it HAS to be a sleepover!
When you get there, you immediately change into your pj’s and pour wine. Then you decide how it is going to work. Will you all help one person at a time to wrap their gifts, because 4 hands (or 6 or 8 or 10!) are better and quicker than 2, or will you each wrap your own gifts individually but together as a group? Will someone else write your Santa tags so the kids don’t recognize your handwriting?
This has many benefits. Firstly, it’s fun, its time with friends away from the family, and it’s productive and cheeky. It always feels like a bit of a rush to do something a bit sneaky like this and get away with it! Secondly, if you still have one or 2 difficult people to buy for, you can see what other people bought for the people in their lives and maybe steal an idea or 2! Thirdly, when you return to the house, the suitcase can be neatly stored away wherever it goes, full of neatly wrapped gifts ready to go and nobody will suspect a thing!
And, one of the best things about it is that it can become a tradition, something you do and look forward to each year together with your friends, and your spouse can’t really complain because you are in fact getting important stuff done (if you let them in on the secret that is. If you think they are a peeker, then you can always say you have agreed to help everyone else.
These sorts of traditions are great for making memories and building on. The purpose may be gift wrapping, but that doesn’t mean you can’t watch cheesy Christmas romance movies at the same time if you want to, or that you can’t go out for a fancy dinner before, during or after the wrapping. Maybe you’ll all play your favourite Christmas song to the others, and dance, or tell stories about your favourite holiday memories. Maybe when it is all done you will take a walk and look at the Christmas lights together, or visit a gravestone of someone special on the other side, or see a show.
If you get lucky, one of your friends might show you one of those cool fancy new ways to wrap gifts, or you could watch youtube videos on it and try to follow along. You could even make it more fun by challenging everyone to research a fancy wrapping technique to show the group!
In the morning you can sober up over coffee and croissants and help with the cleaning up. Just make sure everyone has walked away with their own presents in their own suitcase or Christmas morning could be quite upsetting and stressful!
This tip even works for those of you who do a spot of last minute shopping as long as the slumber party happens 2 or 3 days before Christmas as obviously it can’t be done on Christmas eve, unfortunately.
If this method won’t work for you, then I suggest setting aside a quiet time in the evening when everyone is in bed, one evening a week until Christmas and do Wrapping Wednesdays for example. Maybe the first night you wrap the kids gifts, then the next week you do your partner and or family, then the next your extended friends and colleagues etc….
Not you. Not this year. Not if you’re organised!
And hey, if all else fails, pack all your gifts into the car, go to the shops, bring an empty trolley to the car, load the presents in, and take it to the charity gift wrapping stall. Might be the best thirty dollars you spend, and you can do shopping or have a coffee while you wait! Where there’s a will there’s a way.
But at the end of the day, friends are there to help and always make things more fun!
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
