Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Works-For-Me Wednesday: Gift Card Organizer

This is my first Works-For-Me Wednesday post, but I just remembered an idea good enough to share! :)

We like gift cards, but it seemed like our stash was growing out of control. We get them for Christmas and for the kids' birthdays....and though we love to use them, they were becoming difficult to keep track of! We were keeping them safely filed away, but it meant rifling through an entire stack to find what we wanted. Sometimes we couldn't find it at all. Other times, we overlooked an additional gift card we could have used at the same store.

And then last year, I came across something similar to this while shopping with the kids:
Vinyl Business Card Book. My husband looked at me ever-so-strangely when he opened this as one of his gifts on Christmas morning (he had no idea what I was thinking!), but since then he's recognized and appreciated having all of our gift cards organized in one place!

Here's what it looks like in action:

I've organized the gift cards in an order that seems logical to me (though this page doesn't exactly reflect it!). We grouped them in categories, with similar cards together: department stores, entertainment, restaurants, etc. We track card balances by either writing the amount on the back with a Sharpie or labeling it with a small piece of masking tape. With a little effort, this book has made it easy to see what we have to spend now. When it's time to go shopping, we can grab our gift card file book and we're ready to go!

How do you organize your gift cards?

For more GREAT ideas, check out all of the Works-For-Me Wednesday links at We Are THAT Family!

6 comments:

  1. I love this idea. It sure beats the method we have been using for our gift cards.

    Currently all of ours are thrown in a kids sized shoe box and kept on a shelf.

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  2. This is a great idea! We have ours stashed in a tin and it is not a good system. My husband is a teacher and tends to get a lot of gift cards for the holidays, so we will have to try this soon! Thank you!

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  3. We don't have a lot of gift cards, so it's easy to keep them either in my planner or my wallet. However, if the need ever arises, I'm totally borrowing your idea. Thanks for sharing!

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  4. that's terrific! I can never seem to find the gift cards when I need them, and then of course, discover them after I've already paid for the items... ahhh!

    glad you posted this!

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