How to make a Christmas list your family will actually use

Most Christmas lists go wrong in the same three ways. They get written in a hurry in December, so they say “socks” and “a book”. They go out as a screenshot or a text, so nobody can tell what someone else already bought. And they say “the blue one” to a person who has never seen the blue one.

None of that needs an app to fix. It needs a list that is written a little earlier, says a little more, and lives in one place. This guide is how to make one, with or without Omriya.

Keep your wishes in one place all year

The best Christmas lists are not written at Christmas. They are collected. You see a lamp at a friend’s flat in June, you finish a book in August and want the next one, your headphones start to crackle in October. Each of those is a wish, and each one is gone by December unless you wrote it down that day.

So keep one place for all of them: a note on your phone, a page in a notebook, a wishlist app. It does not matter which, as long as it is the same place every time and you add to it the moment a wish turns up.

Then, when someone asks what you want for Christmas, you do not start from an empty page. You pick.

A Christmas list and a birthday list are two picks from the same wishes, not two lists to keep up.

What to put on it

A good list gives people something to act on. That usually means one of three things per wish.

• A link, when there is one exact thing you want. Link to the product page, not to a search result or a shop’s home page.
• A photo, when you saw it somewhere and have no link. A picture of the shelf label or the thing itself is enough for most people to find it.
• A line of text, when the wish is not a product at all. “Tickets to something, anything, in January.” “A day out with you.” “A good night’s sleep”, which is a fair answer for a new parent and a strong hint about who should take the baby for an evening.

Not every wish should be a thing. Some of the best presents on a list are an experience, a skill, or someone’s time, and people are often relieved to see them, because they are easier to get right than clothes.

If you are making a list for a child, the old rhyme is a good shape: something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read. It keeps the list short and keeps it from being all toys.

Prices: a spread, and when to leave them out

Put the price next to a wish when you know it. It saves people a click and tells them at once which wishes fit what they planned to spend.

Then make sure the list has a spread: a few small things, a few in the middle, and one or two big ones that a couple of people might share. The people who buy for you do not all spend the same. A list of five wishes that all cost the same amount leaves somebody out.

Leave the price off when it would make the wish awkward, or when the wish has no price, like the day out. A missing price is fine. A missing cheap option is the real problem.

Add the details that stop a wrong version

Plenty of returned presents are the right thing in the wrong version. Write down what you would have to choose if you bought it yourself:

• Size, for anything you wear, in the shop’s own sizing if you know it.
• Colour or finish, in words, even if the photo shows it.
• Model or edition, for anything that has more than one: the phone it has to fit, the paperback or the hardback, the second book in a series, not the first.
• Where to buy it, when it is only sold in one place.

One extra line per wish is enough. “Size M, the dark green, not the olive” saves a trip to the post office in January.

When to send it

Earlier than feels polite. People who like to plan start to ask in November, and sales such as Black Friday come before December does. A list that arrives in the second week of December reaches the people who were going to shop late anyway.

A good rule: have the list ready by mid-November, and send it to anyone who asks from then on. If nobody has asked by the start of December, it is fine to send it yourself.

For a birthday, two or three weeks before the day works for most families. Anything shipped from far away needs more.

What to say when you send it

Most people feel awkward sending a wishlist. They should not. A list is a kindness to the people who buy for you: it saves them guessing, and it saves you both from the polite smile over the wrong thing.

Send it when you are asked, with a line that makes it easy to say no to:

“Here’s my list, in case it helps. No pressure at all, and anything off it is lovely too.”

If nobody asks, a single message to the family chat in early December does the job. Send it once. A list that arrives with a reminder every week stops being a help.

Send one link, not a screenshot

A screenshot of a list is out of date the moment one person buys something from it. A text with ten links is worse: nobody can tell what the others have done, so two cousins buy the same book and nobody buys the lamp.

What stops this is a list that the people buying from it share. When one of them takes a wish, the others see that it is taken. You can do this with a shared document, as long as everyone can edit it and you promise not to look. You can do it with most wishlist apps. Whatever you use, send everyone the same link, so there is one list and not four copies of it.

The harder part is the promise not to look. On a shared document you will see every change. If the surprise matters to you, use something that hides from you what has been taken.

The birthday version: same wishes, a new pick

When your birthday comes round, do not make a new list. Open the place you kept your wishes all year, take off what you got at Christmas, add what turned up since, and pick again.

The wishes that nobody bought at Christmas are still there, and some of them are now the best ideas on the list. The details you wrote down in November still hold. The only new work is the pick.

That is the whole method: collect all year, pick for the occasion, write the details, send one link.

How Omriya does it

We made Omriya for exactly this, so here is how the method above maps onto it.

You add a wish by pasting a link, taking a photo, or typing a line, and the price is optional. There is no cap on wishes, so you can add one the day you think of it. When an occasion comes round, you pick the wishes for it, make a list, and send one link. The link opens in any browser, so the people you send it to install nothing and pay nothing.

To reserve a wish, a giver signs in once, with Google, Apple or a link sent by email. After that, every other giver sees the wish as taken, so nobody buys it twice. You, the person the list is for, see nothing. If you keep a list for someone else, a child or a parent, it works the other way round: you see what is taken, so you can fill the gaps.

You can also add the date as an event and get a reminder before it, so the list goes out in time.