Has anyone started wrapping yet? Strategies to hide, wrap, remember...

[YeahWellWhyNot]

Just curious really! I have 3 kids under the age of 7 so am in full Christmas planning mode else it turns into chaos through Dec. I also do 'tree up day' boxes which contain their jumpers and PJ's so they are worn well through Dec as opposed to Christmas eve boxes, but this painfully coincides with bringing out the fill your own advent calendars (didn't think this through at all as this amounts to 75 tiny things 😭) Spent this morning strategically hiding all of the bits under our bed as I've been stuffing them wherever I could through the year (as I spread the cost from Jan onwards) and now I feel its game on I need to get cracking.

Do you pull out everyone's bits and look at the piles then wrap?

Wrap as you go?

Just get on with it last minute and hope for the best?

Was thinking I may need to put together scooters and hide in the car Christmas eve 😬 my eldest is far to uppy downy in the night especially if he's excited so I'm already fretting how to get presents out on the night...conscious I may only have a year or two left of him believing

Tips welcome!

I try to wrap a few things a day from December onwards but I’m determined this year to get it all done for December.

I mostly stuff everything into the back of wardrobes etc so I have a spreadsheet with what I’ve bought, how much I’ve spent and where it is hidden!

When we were little my mum used to hide presents in the suitcases

Different wrapping paper for each person and put labels on Xmas eve - so if any little person does go rooting they don’t know it’s for them

I put all my stuff in my lovely next door neighbours house 🤣 she has no kids and she keeps our pressies in her spare room I collect Xmas eve

i dont Wrap never had sealed presents as a kid ether

I set the gifts up in the room - separate side for each kid!

it’s all just out or shoved in stockings if it fits

Each child has their own paper. Wrap as soon as possible after stuff arrives/comes back from the shop. Keep a box under my bed with paper, scissors, sellotape.

I put each persons presents in a separate bag and keep all the bags up the top of the wardrobes in my bedroom.

I don't wrap the dcs presents. They each have a sack with their names on it they place them under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.

As a child, our presents were never wrapped. I have started to wrap presents for family members and some of the younger nieces and nephews. They are in the attic.

I have two sacks so they are in the attic with the santy presents and I bring them down on Christmas eve put them in my bed room and lock the door. My ds is getting a gaming table I will leave that in the shed and just cover it up.

I put things in places. DH helpfully moves the things to other, more hidden places, such as the attic, the back of cupboards, or boxes under the bed. DH gets the stuff down to be wrapped, several items missing. I ask where various presents that he has hidden are, he denies having ever seen them in his life. 2 years later, we find the lovingly selected gifts that the intended receiver never saw.

It would feel wrong to start wrapping Christmas presents before December 😂
In December I will wrap presents for people outside of the house when I have time as it doesn’t matter if my child or partner sees the gifts that aren’t for them 😂
For my child and partners gifts, I will wrap them in our bedroom on one of my partners days off/at night whilst my partner has our child in another room so they don’t see their presents!!

I have most of the presents now and they are in an ottoman upstairs and in bags on top of and in the wardrobe and in a few other places around the house.

When they are wrapped and labelled, presents for people outside of the house will go in bags for each person and presents for my child and partner will go in bags, ready to bring downstairs on Christmas Eve night. Big presents will be wrapped and then put on top of the wardrobes until they get brought down on Christmas Eve night too 😊

I was supposed to start last week but haven’t yet, but I’ve got it planned in my head.

In the past I’ve tried to wrap as I go.

Bulk of the presents are stored in a suitcase on top of DDs wardrobe, I have some scattered around in my usual hiding spots. Everything is listed on my iPad so if something goes missing I know it is missing. I have a history of missing, loosing and forgetting presents.

All jumpers and Christmas attire is stored in another case which I took down last week. So I have an empty case waiting to be filled. I will wrap what I have hiding around hopefully tomorrow or Monday and put away in the case making sure I remember to label everything. I have printed stickers with each DDs name so I’m not having to write loads of gift tags. I also colour coordinate each DDs gifts so it’s easy to see who’s presents are who’s.

Im actually considering shaking things up this year by doing Santa gifts in different paper as I’ve muddled tags in the past mixing parent and Santa gifts up.

My aim is to have everything wrapped by December with only last min things to be done Xmas eve, these are DHs job as I do every other present so last min stuff is left for him to do. DH dose any building which he would never consider doing early, he’s a last min or Christmas morning man.

We have everything sorted for Christmas by the 23rd leaving Christmas Eve as a getting ready for Santa day, early baths and bed at their usual times. We are lucky once my DDs are asleep there is no waking them, it’s just a matter of waiting, I do this by enjoying my Christmas Eve snowballs. Once we know they are asleep suitcases come out and anything else I’ve packed the presents in. If everything is done it’s max a 10min job, we’ve never spent longer than an hour setting up even if extra wrapping is needed.

We only ever did last min wrapping once never again.

We have takeaways for dinner so no dishes, the house is all ready to go so it’s just a matter of setting up the tree and bed.

I also hide presents in plain site, right now there about 5 Amazon boxes in my room with presents in. My DDs know not to look in them, they assume they are things for DHs job or I’m sorting or packing away summer clothes. This is easily passed off it I put an item of clothing on top, they are far too lazy to move things around 😂

I gave up on fill your own calendars, too expensive and extra work. They now pick their own cheap choc one then Santa brings them an extra gift one, toy, Lego, makeup.

One of the reasons I like to be done early is I have unpredictable health issues so if I leave things too late I might not be fit enough to do them. I feel so much better when I know everything is all ready to go.

Each DC has their own wrapping paper. I get it all out with the help of DH, when has a day off. We ship DC off to DGP so we can look at all the presents bought and decide if we need to buy anything else. We then wrap like elf’s, while I force DH to watch Christmas movies and have a few glasses of wine, light the candles and have a nice takeaway. DH is especially good at packing all the presents back neatly in big boxes so they don’t tear or get squished.

Op since our painful rookie mistakes when dd was younger, ie trying to drag down huge bin bags of gifts right by her bedroom door, I now try and wrap as I go as well as having the odd few hours here and there to wrap.
It's hidden in plain site within storage bags that are always in our bedroom.

I don't do different wrapping paper but instead chose one style label for each person. I wrap as I buy them.

I take a picture of the item, wrap it and take another picture of it wrapped. I store these pics in a password protected photo app, which have folders for each person so I know what I have and haven't bought/wrapped and so I don't panic buy nearer Christmas because I think one has more than the other 🤣

I'm past the worst of the Christmas madness nowadays bc my DC are grown up but even when I was in the middle of it, I much preferred wrapping a few days before Christmas because there's always last minute swaps or "evening up" decisions to be made. And I think aesthetically it comes out better but I am a bit poncey like that ; small DC don't care!

I have a present cupboard in my home office. Everyone knows not to go near it.

The only things I do wrap in advance (but not everything) are small stocking presents which I do as I go along and then it's as much as a surprise to me as everyone else what's in there 😆

And no I haven't wrapped one present yet. I only started buying presents this week.

I moved the suitcases into the utility for storage 😉.

This year I'll wrap while ds is at school on my day off and we hide them at my fils house as he's in Spain until next spring 🤣

I have a spreadsheet on google docs with lots of Christmas related things. One of the sheets lists family members by name and then breaks it down by type of present. So in our case the kids have a christmas eve box, a stocking, a santa sack, gifts from us, gifts from others. Then next to the gifts column I have 4 more columns - ordered, arrived, wrapped, bagged. I colour the columns to show the stage they're in. I then set aside a couple of free afternoons in the lead up to Christmas where I pull presents down from their hiding places and wrap, bag them (for easy transport down the stairs on Christmas Eve) and check them off. It sounds fiddly but a week before when everything else is in chaos it's nice to be able to scan the lists and see what hasn't been dealt with yet. It's one of the few bits of Christmas I feel I have a really good handle on. There are a few other columns on their two, notably the cost of each item to keep track of what's been spent.
I don't go to great lengths to hide the gifts as my kids would never go looking. They know not to go in our room in December. So most of everything just sits in boxes in there, but I do hide the santa sacks in the wardrobe just in case they forget.

I've just wrapped ds1's presents this week and put them in bags under the spare bed. We were running out of hiding places and this year he is too nosy now he is getting older (nearly 6)

I also have ds2 but he is only 7 month so his presents are just on the spare bed 😂

I've got a list of present on my phone and his main presents I've put two bigger bows on so I know he needs to open that near the beginning

Just make sure you've a spare roll of sellotape (ideally, a few spare rolls) for when you inevitably misplace your only roll. Or when you run out late on Christmas Eve (don't ask me how I know this).

I’ve not started wrapping yet. I have started to get the supplies needed to wrap. I like to try to ‘complete a person’ in a wrapping session. It means I feel like I’ve accomplished more. I also keep notes about where I’ve stored presents and what I’ve wrapped up.

Wow some great tips. Some of you have gone to some serious planning lengths! I've managed to do the advent calendars, albeit they don't require any wrapping! And the stockings are done. Thanks to this marvellous section of mn I learned a few years a go to buy two of each stocking, let the kids hang theirs and then swap the whole thing with my already prepared wrapped one. I still feel this is genius as the first year I had 3 DC I spent way too long at midnight+ a glass of wine or three trying to put the right thing in the right stocking whilst not waking everyone up!

I love the idea of starting proper wrapping in Dec with a movie on but work is looking v. Busy from first week Dec so I may need to start this week to avoid the panic. Will still find a cheesy movie though!

Have cleared out under our bed for hiding the presents just hope I can fit it all under without squishing anything. For some reason everything looks bigger wrapped 😮

Will make a note of looking at piles first to check they're even ISH. My little'un wont care but my 5&7 year old might..

Good luck everyone ☺️

I have just done most of mine tonight. Mainly for my son who is 21 in two weeks time. (he is my only child and I raised him alone).
I cheated this year and bought a pack of 12 large Christmas boxes from Amazon (that are just the right size for a jacket or dressing gown and instead of wrapping everything separately like I normally do, I filled about 6 boxes with things like Jeans, sweatshirts, T-shirts etc then wrapped his fragrance, trainers and all the other bits I got him in wrapping paper. It is all piled up high in my bedroom. Luckily he is not a snoop and never was as a child, he likes to see what he gets on the day as Christmas is his favorite time of the year.
Still have to wrap my father and my favorite aunt's gifts but will do that nearer the time as part of it includes money and gift cards.
I actually dislike wrapping, I end up with backache and like to get it out the way.

I go to my parents' house most days hence the Christmas presents live there. Or my locker at work... actually I might keep them all at work this year; with a 14yo most of the gifts are small and I'm working nights on Christmas Eve so I can bring them home with me on Christmas morning. And I can wrap them on my break on Xmas Eve