What is your present wrapping system?

[ernjas]

Something I'm curious about.

Do you hide the presents in a family members household and wrap them there before bringing them home?
Do you hide them in your house and wrap them before Christmas? Or do you wrap them on Christmas Eve after the children go to bed?

My mum always just hid the presents in our (small) house and wrapped them on Christmas Eve and I never suspected anything, found my presents, heard the wrapping and believed in FC until I was almost 12

Family members house* not household

I hide them in the house, then banish DH from a particular room, grab a glass of wine, pop on a Christmas film and get wrapping.

I set up a wrapping 'station' on the floor. Paper, tags and ribbon all set out, one of those cellotape dispensers and good scissors.

DH and I then do the kids ones together a different evening.

We hide them in the wardrobe in our bedroom.

I get together with my sisters and a couple of friends every year for a wrapping party. We meet at someone's house early evening and wrap together, fuelled on mulled wine and lots of festive nibbles. It makes a long tedious job a lot more fun. Highly recommended.

DH and I wrap anything that's left one evening before Christmas after the DC are in bed.

No young kids in the house so I don't hide them.

All presents are currently in my bedroom sitting in the boxes they came in and the smaller things are in the box one of the bigger things came in as all the packaging that removed left room.

Dp works different hours to me so I plan on doing an hour an evening until it's all done. Iv got a little folding table so just sit on the couch and use that.
When we worked the same hours I would spread things out on my bed and ban Dp from coming into the bedroom until I'd finished.

I get most of the gifts for our lot. I wrap them as I get them. I don’t leave them unwrapped, begging to be found. Someone would accidentally happen upon them and spoil it .

DH does his few (the ones for me) all at once, in a blind panic. They usually look like a dog chewed them. It’s not his strong point.

Dh and I have a secret cupboard, and we stash presents there throughout the year as we shop.
Somewhere in the 3rd week of December we get a bit squiffy, sit on the bed and wrap presents for the kids and the rest of the family.
We usually have separate stashes of presents for each other tucked away, and we wrap those him in the bedroom, me in the kitchen type thing.

We don't buy for each other and have only bought for the DC this year. The bigger 2 dc are in beavers/cubs and they have a Christmas camp, usually the first week of December. I usually rope someone into having the little 2 dc overnight that weekend and wrap everything then. This year I watched loads of gavin and stacey whilst wrapping.

I hide them, DD wraps them on Christmas Eve after DS2's asleep, apart from hers. She's Father Christmas now.

We put all of the presents in two large cupboards in the kitchen and our airing cupboard. Our DD’s haven’t stumbled across them yet.

DH does all the wrapping, I hate it and he’s really good at it. In return I buy the presents, except for mine - apart from this year I bought some slippers from him, I saw them and as the money all comes out of the same account it was easier just to get them.

DH is my carer and because we’re at home in the day he wraps adults one day and the DC’s another. Adult presents then go under the tree apart from mine because I can’t be trusted not to snoop and the DD’s get put in their sacks and back into the hiding places.

On Christmas Eve DH literally gets their sacks and stockings out and once they’ve gone to bed and we get a nice relaxed evening

Various hiding places around our house mostly - have used family members for large items on years we travel to them on occasion but usually stash everything in the boot as we travel.

I may have to do a short session for overseas parcels ahead of the main bum of wrapping - but I mostly gather everything together with a clean kitchen table (or ironing board to save my back), rolls of paper, tape dispenser, scissors, tags, ribbons and my lists.

Empty bags on floor so I can put relevant families together as I wrap, to make it easier to organize and drop off.

Christmas music on, potentially a glass of wine at hand - not s movie though or that distracts from the job at hand.

Wrap as we go.
When I get all The decorations down from the loft at the beginning of December and put up the tree and decorations we have bags of crackers/Christmas cards/wrapping paper with wrapping decorations, bows and twirly bits.

All this lives in the dining room. so, over the last few weeks as DH and I have bought the presents we have immediately wrapped them. or they've arrived via eBay or Amazon, we have wrapped them and they are already under the tree.

All presents come from DH and I. we only get one present for the children from Santa.

Last year I wrapped as they arrived. Made life so much easier.

Hate wrapping and am totally crap. Friend wraps in exchange for dinner!!

I'm not sure if this is a bit weird but my mum used to do it for me -

For those who use sacks (as opposed to presents under the tree)... does anyone put them in order of how exciting the presents are (if that makes sense)? I mean, I loved all my presents but my mum would put the least exciting/things I needed/things I expected at the top and then the most exciting/surprising at the bottom to be opened last?

I stash everything in my wardrobe and then wrap sometime in December, not less than a week before Christmas. I need everyone out of the house so I can sort things without doing something like wrapping DD’s bath bombs and writing Merry Christmas MrAdora on the tag.

That said, I only wrap presents for DH and our DC. DH is responsible for sorting presents for his family.

Ooh reading with interest as I feel I need a wrapping system.

I love the idea of turning it into a festive event with wine / snacks / music / film. Might suggest that to DH this year. We mostly get for the DC and other family members so the majority of presents are not a secret from each other.

What I really need is some pre-printed stickers saying "to" and "from" to save all this faffing about with gift tags.

Hide them in our room. Wrap over a few evenings then ones for other people go under the tree and the rest get put away in our room again. They aren’t strictly hidden unless they’re Santa ones.

Hidden in the loft. Usually wrap Christmas Eve. It's a good reason not to go too mad

"main bum"??! apologies, I don't know what happened (although I was posting on phone on train) - I think that's meant to read "main session"

I usually do mine on a quiet night when DH has gone out and after I get DD to bed (or she's quietly upstairs watching a movie on her ipad - out of mischief). It's not that I'm wrapping for her (never before shes asleep!), but she wants to "help" but she's not as neat as me, takes 4 times as long, and I just want to get stuck in and do it my way.

No young children here either, the presents are currently in a couple of boxes in the corner of the lounge balefully saying 'wrap me' each time I look at them but are getting ignored.

main bum

@ernjas no, I’ve never thought to do that tbh. All of ours are just put into the sack however they fit. Might change it now though!

You're doing it wrong Biddy, just get DD to do it all, you have the wine and the music.

I have a super king size bed which lifts up for under bed storage so masses of space for hiding things. Plus a large cupboard where the old boiler was. So plenty hiding places which the kids aren't aware of.

I wrap on the bed, kids have a different wrapping paper each & I get all the kids stuff done & stashed when they're at school. They have a hessian style sack each & a small stocking each. The hessian sack is where their main gifts go (& I've got duplicates of the hessian sacks) so I pre fill them. That way, on Christmas Eve, after the kids have put their sacks out, all I have to do is swap them over & fill the small stocking (with Apple, satsuma & sweets)

All presents are stored in the spare room and everyone is banned from there except me. DH hides my presents in his wardrobe and the DC have various things stashed away in their rooms that they have bought.

Once the tree is up (probably Saturday this weekend) I’ll start wrapping and putting presents under the tree. DC love that, and it looks festive.

Should all be done in a couple of evening sessions, accompany a glass of mulled wine and the television or radio