What should you do with your holiday cards?

Organize the holiday cards you receive to be enjoyed for years after the joys of the season have passed.

As a documentary family photographer, you can imagine how much I enjoy receiving holiday cards with photos on them. I LOVE receiving them, I LOVE sending them, I LOVE keeping them and I LOVE looking back at them. (I don’t always love taking my own family’s pictures for them, but that’s a story for a completely different blog post! LOL)

I organize my holiday cards so that I can keep track of, and document in a way, how our family and friends’ families have grown and changed over the years. If you can’t bear to trash these keepsakes every year when the season ends, try this out.

Organize your cards into groups.

I made the following groups: Family, Local Friends, College Friends, High School Friends, and Friends from Other Places We Have Lived. (So, that last one is a long one, but it makes sense for my life and the cards we receive.)

Next, go through each pile and stack the cards, corner-to-corner, as you wish. I stacked mine so that when I flip through the cards they will all have the same orientation, or at least will be able to be flipped through without too much hassle.

Use a hole-punch to make a hole in one corner of each card and use a binder ring to keep each stack of cards together.

Each year, you can add a new set of holiday cards to the rings to enjoy.

I display the newest cards around the house during December and keep the older ones in a decorative bin. My kids like looking through them, too. Sometime after January 1st, I add the newer cards to the rings, placing the newest on top of the previous years’, by family.

This way, I can flip through and see one family at a time and how they have changed over the years.

I love having them organized this way. By doing this, I guarantee that each year I will look through the cards from my loved ones at least two times - when I take them out and when I add the new ones. Let me know in the comments if you decide to try this out or if you have another way to enjoy your holiday cards year after year!

Happy Holidays!

~Laura :)