The holiday shopping season is ramping up. The Halloween decorations and costumes fill the store shelves. The Christmas items will soon follow.
I just heard that Amazon is now having a special “Holiday Shopping Day” sale this October. This sale is called “Early Access Sale” day on October 11-12, 2022. It will be two days of holiday deals. Other retailers are also getting in on the act by having early special deal days.
First there was Black Friday on the day after Thanksgiving. Then the sales started on Thanksgiving day. The last few years many of the Black Friday sales started a couple of weeks before the actual Black Friday day.
It get’s early and early each year!
And now there are these special “sale” days in October.
But before you bite at that lure of these special sales, make sure you are prepared ahead of time.
Planning Your Personal Shopping List
Do you know what you need to buy for your holiday decorating or party planning? If not, now is a good time to take inventory of what you already have.
- Inventory your decorations and/or holiday party items. If you took photos of your home during the holidays last year, they can give you a good idea of what you already have.
- List any items you know that need replacing.
- Check the prices ahead of time at your favorite online store.
- If an item on your list is not on sale or isn’t a fantastic sale price, you might want to hold off on buying it right now. It’s still early. Better sales may come along online or in stores.
Planning Your Gift Giving List
If you have a lot of gifts to buy, these early sales may be helpful. You can save some money, especially if the sales are good ones. It also helps you get a jump on the gift buying so you don’t end up rushing around last minute to get things. Plus it can help spread you gift buying budget over a longer period of time.
But before you even begin to purchase any gifts the first step you need to do is create your Master Gift List.
If you’ve been a follower of my blog for awhile you may have already created this list. Now is the time to make your yearly update to it.
If you don’t have a Master Gift List, now is the time to make one before you do any shopping. This link to the Master Gift List will give you the details you need to create it.
Preparing for the Holidays
It’s so easy to get caught up in wanting and buying the latest and greatest Halloween or Christmas decoration. The professional marketers know exactly how to lure you in. That’s why they are adding more “Special Holiday Shopping” days every year. They’re also trying to create that “urgency” to buy now!
If we’re not careful we can easily end up spending more money than we want to, plus have a lot more things that could end up as clutter in our homes.
Halloween is one day of the year and those decorations are usually up for only 3-4 weeks at the most. You still have to store them for the next 11 months. Christmas is only a little longer, usually from Thanksgiving to the first of the year.
Planning and preparing ahead of time will help you stay a step ahead of the marketers, which will put you in control.
The lists mentioned above are a great way to do this. On the Article and Blog Index page there are more helpful articles listed under the Holiday section.
I also have two eBooks available for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble with a lot of tips and ideas to help you plan and prepare for both Halloween and Christmas/Chanukah. You can still take advantage of the those “Holiday Shopping Days” because you will only be buying what you need or want according to your prepared lists.
How To Have A Fun, Safe, And Decluttered Halloween
Tips To Simplify and Organize Your Holidays
To a lighter load along the way.
Janice Scissors