Greeting Card Organization
Two Good Reasons to Organize & Save Greeting Cards (or Not)
by
Karen
Fritscher-Porter
Every December friends and family
send you greeting cards. Perhaps coworkers send you greeting cards too and maybe
even vendors like your insurance agent and your newspaper carrier. Maybe you
also get greeting cards from business partners and customers. While everyone
loves being thought of AT the holidays, you have to decide AFTER the holidays
what to do with these greeting cards.
There are two good reasons to save greeting cards sent to you. If these two
reasons aren't applicable to you and you save all of your greeting cards, then
you're saving clutter. So if your goal this new year is to get organized at
home, start here and start now with these greeting card organization tips.
First, save greeting cards with sentimental value to you. That means you do NOT
have to save greeting cards from all of those other nice people who sent you
holiday greetings. Really, you don't. That includes the greeting cards and
holiday post cards with real family photos that are so popular. You don't have
to keep portraits of other people's families and pets that have no sentimental
meaning to you.
The keywords are "sentimental value". By all means do put holiday postcard
photos of your grandchildren in frames or in your photo album. Just cut the
photo out of the card or postcard. But you don't have to keep the ones of your
coworker's toddler or the holiday postcard portrait of your newspaper delivery
person's family. Tip: If you have to ask "who are these people" or "what's
his/her name" more than once in a year, it's probably not sentimental to you. It
may be a cute photo card, but it's still not of sentimental value. It's simply
clutter after the new year starts. Discard it.
The second reason to save greeting cards is if you plan to use the greeting
cards in craft projects. This reason may have nothing to do with sentimental
keepsakes discussed above. For instance, the card may have a great photograph or
drawing of Santa. Make it into an ornament. Clip the Santa portrait with
scissors (trash the rest of the card); use a single hole puncher to put one hole
at the top of Santa's picture; string yarn, thread or a hook through the hole;
hang your new Santa cardboard ornament on your Christmas tree or on a
"clothesline" of yarn along with other holiday cutouts. That's just one simple
ornament idea. You can probably think of lots more ideas.
For instance, you can give the cards to your children to cut into paper dolls,
paintings for their doll house walls or to put into collages. It's fun amusement
for them. When they're finished, trash anything they don't want to keep playing
with. But whatever you do, don't keep all of those holiday greeting cards
because you MIGHT do something crafty with them one day. If you don't have a
specific idea now with a timeframe for doing the project, don't save the
greeting cards. If you need more ideas for using or organizing greeting cards
that you'd like to keep, see the list of greeting card organizer tips at
http://www.easyhomeorganizing.com/greeting-card-organizer.htm
Karen Fritscher-Porter publishes
http://www.EasyHomeOrganizing.com where you'll find home organization
products to buy plus hundreds of free articles and tips to keep you organized at
home year-round.