Kathi Burns on NBC News Channel 7 ~ Holiday Organizing Alternatives for Cards and Gifts
(Transcript)
Man: Many people are used to the last minute holiday shopping, but you can skip the stress if you get a little more organized. Rory is here with someone who can help.
Rory: Oh I thought you were going to say that I’m just going to be telling people how to get organized. Not the case! We have an expert here. One of the biggest Christmas tasks is holiday cards. Kathi Burns, the expert, is here with ways you can save money and get more done in less time this season. Kathi, thank you so much for joining us. But it is a big deal sending out all those Christmas cards.
Kathi: It is, and it’s very stressful. And people start stressing Halloween time, thinking about the cards, do they have them, are they going to mail them out, that type of thing.
Rory: Okay, so what suggestions do you have? What’s the first thing that you should do?
Kathi: Well number one, you don’t have to mail them. Do not feel obligated to mail holiday cards. You don’t have to do it. If you want to do it, you don’t have to mail to the 500 people on your list, you can call it down. A lot of people are doing that this year. But also, if you wanted to have an alternative, there are some things that you can do. You can mail out New Years Eve cards, how’s that? Then you can skip the whole pre-holiday jitters, you can do it after the holidays when you’re more relaxed. You could also send e-cards, which is a big thing right now because it saves money. So you can send e-cards through BlueMountain.com. You can also use a fulfillment house like SnapFish and that will save you time and stress because they’ll actually take your cards and process them and ship them out for you – a photo.
Rory: What about card parties? I’ve never heard of that.
Kathi: Well that’s when you want to just have some girlfriends over, you know the holidays it’s hard to have time to spend time with your friends anyhow, so have some girlfriends over, everybody brings their cards on their lists and you just sit around and address cards and then ship them all out and meanwhile have socialization during it.
Rory: And you said get organized, have a binder. Why?
Kathi: A binder. Well this will save a lot of stress because basically everything within the holidays is in this binder if you do it right. Well you just keep track of everything. So you start out, of course you have your pen and your stamps, you have your holiday lists, who you’re intending to buy, what you’re going to buy and if you’ve bought it. You can go into the next section with the receipts in case people don’t like their gifts and they want to return them. Your receipts are all right there, more receipts. The gift lists and also the mailing lists for cards, the addresses. And this is your itinerary for travel and flights. And then the recipes, I’m always jumping around trying to find the recipe for the perfect…what was Mom’s cookie recipe? You can have your recipes all right there. You pull this out once a year and everything is right there. You also have track of what you gave someone last year so you don’t re-give them….
Rory: My goodness, gracious Kathi. I would love to have Christmas at your house! You are way too together for me this morning! That’s great – thank you! You’re scaring me! You’re scaring me! Thanks so much Kathi, great advice. I’m just teasing you as you know. And with that, we’ll toss it back out to Whitney to find out how this fog is doing this morning. Whit…..
