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Christmas Thank Yous
Dec 01, 2007 Categorized: Organize • Simplify •
Yesterday we received our first Christmas gift. As a southern lady, the first thing that crosses my mind when I receive any kind of gift or service is the need to write a thank you note. But for some reason, the term “thank you note” has become quite a burden to me in recent years. Today I decided once and for all to revamp my miserable thank-you writing habit. Here’s how it usually goes.
Gift comes in. I feel so honored and thrilled to have receive the gift that I immediately say out loud, “Oh, that is so sweet. I need to write a thank you note.” I leave the item or the card on the counter with the full intention of writing the note before I ever put the item away. Several days pass, and I get extremely frustrated that I have so much stuff piling up in the kitchen and now no way nor time to do it all. I then put the item where it belongs and add “write thank you note to so-and-so” on my to-do list. But thank you notes are seldom as urgent as “cook dinner”, “wash the reds” or “call tomorrow night’s hostess.” So thank you notes invariably get moved and moved and moved to the next day until they necessitate the need for a separate “Write Thank You Notes To:” list. Particularly at holiday time. Then the list, written on some obscure note paper, gets stuffed under the spatulas or filed in the “To Do” folder, which is a definite sign that something will be lost forever. I finally find the list sometime around Valentine’s Day and feel so embarrassed that I fail to write the thank you note at all and just throw the list away. This is such a shameful confession.
But this year will be different. I truly mean that. This year I am keeping my Christmas Thank You cards in the kitchen. The unopened package was the one I bought to thank people for Christmas gifts LAST year. 
I have already stamped the envelopes and will stick on the return address labels during my coffee break today. Then, when a gift comes in, I will write the thank you note immediately and walk it out to the mailbox, which is also a too-often forgotten step. I’ve already written the first thank-you note, and I have two more items to open today. My thank you notes will be right there next to the scissors when I open the boxes.