Using Trello to Get Organized for the Holidays

Are you looking for a way to make your holiday planning easier and stress free? In this episode, Cara discusses how to use Trello, a free organizational tool, for holiday planning. She provides a step-by-step guide on how to use the tool to map out the holidays.

Getting Started 

We all know the holiday season is a busy and expensive time for many people. Getting started as early as possible will allow you to take your time for planning so it doesn’t become another added stressor in your life. Planning for the holidays is not just about what gifts you are getting. It involves the parties, the family dinners, shopping for decorations, etc. 

Cara shares the steps you need to go through in order to have a successful holiday season. The first step is adding all the events into your calendar. If you are planning early, this might include events in September or October. For example, if you know in October you are baking cookies for 3 events between November and January, batch all of that together and plan your shopping to get all the ingredients for all of those cookies. That way you don’t have to plan for 3 different shopping trips for the same ingredients.You can even do one big baking session and freeze what you don’t need and bake them for the future events.

Making Your Holiday Map 

Cara shares the second step, which is creating a master to-do list and brain dump in Trello. She suggests creating a tab for budget, meal, gifts, holiday cards and kids activities. You can even put on a timer for a certain length of time and just throw everything and anything you can think of into these lists. Who are the people I need to shop for? What school events are the kids attending? How many holiday dinners am I going to and what do I need to cook? Who do I need to send holiday cards to? You can even divide these questions up into their own tabs and create another to do list. Cara suggests putting a list of what to buy, what to create, what to make and what to clean. You can also create tabs for different holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas) as well. Organize your Trello board in a way that works for you!

Your Holiday Budget

Another step that Cara really emphasizes is the budget. The holidays are a very expensive time, especially between the months of October to December. You need to make sure you are planning and working with the money you are able to spend. Think about how much you are willing to spend on a holiday and work backwards. For example, if you are willing to spend $200 on Thanksgiving, map out all the things you need for the holiday and break up the budget for different things. Say $100 on Thanksgiving dinner, $50 for decorations around the house, $20 for kids crafts and $30 on cards for family members. At this point, you can move the budget around as needed. You do not want to put yourself in a hole for overspending when you cannot afford to.There is always a work around for the holidays!

What makes Trello so great for holiday planning is the ability to include links into your lists. Let’s say you are planning meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas and you see interesting meals on TikTok or Pinterest. Add those links into the necessary tabs that way you know exactly what you are making and can think about the ingredients and how much they will cost (this ties into the budget). The same thing goes for gifts. As the weeks go on, we all see things and think “Oh, this would be a great gift for my mom/brother/partner”. You can insert a link to the gift and mentally cross it off your list.

Take a listen to learn more on how to use Trello for your holiday planning!

Click here to download this episode and save it for later.