How Trello Keeps Me Sane With Holiday Gift-Giving
Most people have Christmas traditions related to putting up trees/decorations or going caroling or baking cookies with family and friends. One of my Christmas traditions revolves around the creation of a couple of Trello boards, as that is what officially kicks off the season.
You might think it's too soon to be writing about Christmas, but let me tell you - just blink and it's going to be here. In fact, the Danes kick off their Christmas season the first Friday in November. Stay vigilant, it's coming!
If I want to be ready, I need my Trello boards. So here's a handy write up of the main ways I use Trello to manage the holidays and make them as stress-free as possible, specifically related to shopping and gift-giving.
The Christmas Shopping List
My most useful board is my Christmas Shopping List where I keep track of all the gift-buying I need to do. I've been doing this for a couple of years, and now I don't know how I ever used anything else.
Each card is a person I need to shop for and the board flows linearly with lists for each stage of the process:
- People who need a gift
- People who have been partially purchased (I like giving multiple gifts :) )
- People who I am done shopping for
- People whose gifts are wrapped and ready to be delivered
It's an easy way to figure out exactly what I still need to do for my Christmas shopping.
For each card, I use the comments and description or attachments to jot down any ideas I have about what to get that person, along with any other notes. This is a helpful way to collaborate with my husband who is not much of a shopper, but occasionally offers useful feedback on things to get his family. He can easily go in and add ideas to a card for what to get a person, and then I can take action and make it happen.
I used to assign him to specific cards so we split up the shopping process and he knew who to buy for, but let's just say I do it more efficiently (read: better), so now I just let him provide input. :)
But it doesn't end there... I do a little extra to make the board even more powerful.
Like most of us in the 21st century, I shop online for many of my gifts (if not all of them). And I find the Package Tracker Power-Up extremely helpful for keeping up with where all of my gifts are. All i have to do is type in the tracking number and select the carrier, and my card will populate updates as they become available so I can always tell where an item is!
I also like to use the Custom Fields Power-Up and the Number Stats Power-Up to keep track of my spending (although, you could use it for a variety of things!)
Just create a custom number field for "Budget" and another custom number field for "Actual". I update the budget when I first create the card, and then I update the "Actual" with how much I spent on this person as I go.
When I want to see my total spending (vs my budget), I just click the number stats in the top right corner of the board, and it shows me everything summed up. I can easily compare my budget of spend to how much I've actually spent. (Spoiler alert - it's always over! I really like buying things for people!)
(Running low on power-ups? You can also use a Chrome Extension called "Scrum for Trello". It has a feature that will let you add numbers to brackets [ ] and parenthesis ( ) in a card title and it will sum up all those amounts at the top of the list.)
Feel free to copy my template and create your own version here.
My Christmas Wishlist
My other handy holiday board is my Christmas wishlist.
It's just a simple public board where I list out everything I want. It's easier than Pinterest or Amazon wishlists or anything else I've found, because...
1) Not everyone in my family is on Pinterest, and no account is needed to view a public Trello board.
2) I can update this in real-time (I used to have to send an email in November... and hope that was all I wanted, but now I can update this when I think of new things!).
3) It's platform/link agnostic. I used to use Amazon wishlists but you can't link to thinks outside of Amazon. Here I can link to anything I find on the internet, or even share a picture of something I find in-store at Target.
4) I can add details about items. Instead of just providing a link, I can detail the color or size I want, or any additional details!
This year I created different lists to make it easier for friends and family to sort through, something I could also achieve with labels.
My next improvement will be finding a way to anonymously mark something as purchased where I can't see it, but anyone else looking at the board can. Ie, my mom can look and see that something has been purchased so she shouldn't buy it. Typically my family just communicates amongst themselves, but I wish I could find an easier way to do this in Trello, while hiding all the activity from the board creator - me! If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them.
Check out my wishlist, and feel free to copy and make a version for yourself. (Or if you have been wondering what to get for your favorite Trello nerd, now you know as this is not a copy - this is my actual wishlist.)
So what do you think? I hope you find this useful, and I'd love to hear about other holiday boards that people use that I can add to my Trello Holiday Collection!
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Brittany Joiner
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Trello Nerd & Author of Supercharging Productivity w/ Trello
PixieBrix
Baton Rouge, Lousiana, USA
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