Stress Free Christmas Shopping!

Procrastination is a family holiday tradition, if you will. We put up our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve last year, for example. But this year, I vowed to do better, and there's nothing like a verbose 5-year-old daughter to help.

"When are we going to put up the Christmas tree? When are we going to put up the Christmas tree? When are we going to put up the Christmas tree?" asked the broken record in pigtails.

So we got the tree up in record time — a full week before Christmas. Yet, twas six
days before Christmas and I had not purchased one single gift.

I devised a brilliant plan to do a little Christmas shopping each day during my
lunch break. The plan was so brilliant, thousands of others thought the same
thing. The first day, I planned to purchase two gifts, but traffic and long
check-out lines barely permitted one. I returned to the office unsure of my
rushed purchase and exhausted.

But I didn't let that deter me. I dusted myself off and went back on day two. My
morning meeting was canceled so I took two hours off from work to do some
serious shopping. Surely I'd miss yesterday's afternoon crowd, I thought. Not
so. I checked my calendar and extended my break another hour. And after another hour, I extended it two more hours. By the end of the day, I had taken most of the day off, but had little to show for it. Frustrated, I tweeted:

"Wanted: Black Baby Alive Doll. Desperate Mommy willing to pay top dollar."

That tweet was revolutionary and opened my mind to a new phenomenon for me: Stress Free Christmas Shopping!

1. Use social media — Within five minutes, I had three replies and a text message
from mothers with leads on the critical mission, Operation Black Baby Alive.

2. Call around — Once I got the kids settled for the night, I called the stores
from my leads to see if they were still in possession of the precious
commodity. No need to waste more time I don't have driving around to stores
that don't have the doll in stock. The one store I avoided is the one store
that actually had one doll left. I asked the man on the phone to hold it for me
and he said he couldn’t, but he would "place" it in the sporting
goods section in case I wanted it (wink, wink). Favor!

3. Shop very early in the morning — Set your alarm for 5 or 6 a.m., that is. You don't even have to fix yourself up that much. You won't see many people. Stores
like Walmart are open all the time and stores like Toys R Us are open 24 hours
the week leading up to Christmas. They also get shipments almost nightly and
unload them at about 6 the following morning. I arrived at Toys R Us at 6 a.m.,
got great parking, found the items I couldn't the day before and had extra
personal assistance because there were only five other customers in the store.

Shopping on the Internet is always a sure way to eliminate stress, but I didn't know stores like Toys R Us (which should be paying me for this post, but isn't) allow you to purchase online and they ship it to your local store free of charge. And you can never go wrong with gift cards or cash, especially for the teenagers on your list.

Hope this helps you! It sure helped me! Happy Holidays and Happy Shopping!