Making a card organiser

I was thinking about birthdays the last few days. I think re-reading my post about sorting through the kids birthday cards and it made me realise how lovely it is to RECEIVE cards and how I always like to think of myself as the kind of person who SENDS cards even to people who don't necessarily return them. If they mean something to me then I like to send them a card on their birthday because I know how I feel when I receive a card on my birthday. However, in the past few years with the kids and all the other stuff that's been going on in our lives I've just got a bit rubbish when it comes to being organised enough to remember to go to the shops to buy cards, buy stamps & send them out on time. 


Figuring out when & who


To start off with I decided jto create a spreadsheet to list all birthdays so I know what I'm dealing with. So I added a page to my Command Central spreadsheet (which will eventually get printed out and put in my notebook). I copied the format from one of the other pages and created a page that lists the following:

• Date (of birthday)
• Name / Occassion (just put name if its a birthday - but if not a birthday then the occassion - eg, "anniversary")
• Notes for card/present buying
• Year (this probably won't be displayed when I print it out as I only need it to work out the person's age)
• Age

Here is a screenshot (I have of course populated it but I didn't want to compromise my friends' privacy by listing their dates of birth on my blog lol):

The format is very naughtily stolen from the very lovely Jen from iHeartOrganizing. Please check out her site. Its a font of masses of inspiration and you can buy her templates from her shop. 

How can I make it easier for myself?

Once I figured out who's birthdays I want to send cards and/or presents for, I started thinking about the best way to organise it so that its easy for me to plan ahead and make the process easier on myself. 


As always with me (as I'm beginning to discover), if it looks pretty, I'll use it. So I did a Google image search on "organizing greeting cards" to see if there was anything that caught my eye. Here are four sites that really got my creative juices flowing:


My organised greeting card box
Reader Question - Organizing the Greeting Cards
Organize your greetings cards
Card organizer tutorial


Making my own


I happened to have the perfect size box in my office (box hoarder that I am) and I had some blue card that I'd been keeping "just in case". So I cut the card down to the right width and figured out what the right height was. I don't care if the lid won't go on (it probably wouldn't fit with the size of some cards anyway and I wanted the dividers (that's what the blue card was going to be) to be higher than most of the cards. Once I had the card the right size (used the first one as a template to make the other dividers), I used some coloured card (I have a whole box of it - KNEW it would come in handy someday) which I cut into circles and used my mini hammer and tools (can't remember what those little button type things are called that you hammer into paper.... you'll see) to make the divider headers, as you can see below:

my tools

more tools

the finished article

So I started with the months of the year. The idea is that I'll buy the cards in advance - maybe decide in advance what card is for who and just put it in its month slot (maybe with a post it on it indicating who its for. 


Then I decided that I probably needed a section for cards by occasion - when I don't know yet who the recipient will be. First I did a birthday one:

Then I did a "new arrivals" one. 

Then I decided that I'd better have a boy "new arrivals" one too (I happened to have a matching topper sticker anyway):

 I had some thank you cards so I made a "thank you" section, and a "congratulations" section (for engagement/wedding cards etc):

 And a "Christmas" section for those slightly more special Christmas cards (the rest of the Christmas cards are with the Christmas decorations up in the loft. 

I actually ran out of the blue card I was using for the dividers so I started using other card I have in my card supply and I'm quite happy with how its turned out. 


This is how the finished product looks. I might decorate the box a bit. Maybe cover it with nice fabric. As you can see the box is far too big for what I have in it at the moment but I doubt it will stay that way if I start buying cards and planning ahead like I intend to. 

 Now all I need is to go buy some cards!