Now that DD is in 1st grade it's getting harder to hide gifts. She can access all my old hiding spots. Where are you hiding your stuff?
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@Corduroy: The master bedroom closet but Lo1 is 2.5 and baby is 4months old!
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@Corduroy: We keep everything in a storage closet off of our garage. The kids are already not allowed in there because it has all of Daddy's hunting/fishing/tools stuff. They're only 3.5 and 2, so hopefully that continues to work for a while.
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The coat closet and still boxed on the dining room table
but i know next year I have to step up my game! I'll be following for ideas.
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In our walk up attic. But the door is in DS’s room and he’s starting to get more curious. So I think I’m going to buy a keypad lock for that door.
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Regular gifts from us are in an empty plastic storage tub in the garage on a shelf. I leave it there all year and she just assumes it has house stuff in it.
Large gifts and her gift from Santa are two miles away at my mom’s. We go to my in-laws on Christmas Eve so my mom runs them to our house and puts them in our closet while we are gone.
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@catgirl: what an awesome set up with your mom!! great way to keep them from being discovered
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@Ajsmommy: yes! We moved back near family last year and it worked out perfectly last Christmas! Prior to that DD was young enough that they were just in my closet in bags and she didn’t notice. But it’s great to not even have it in the house. And if I order it online I just ship it directly there.
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@cake2017: us too on the master closet - in the corner behind longer clothes. I thought they didn’t know and then my oldest made reference to it being the secret hiding spot
- luckily she has a lot of impulse control and is a rule follower. When my middle figures that out I’m in trouble. We also have an old wardrobe in the garage with random stuff in it and I put bigger things in there with a garbage bag covering in case it gets opened.
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In years past it was always the closet in our spare room. Last year we added a new baby so presents went up on the high shelf of her closet, and that's where they are this year too.
DD1 is also in first grade, but she's a rule-follower (so far) and hasn't done much looking. She's never really alone enough to do much hunting for gifts anyway!In the future, we might keep gifts at our offsite storage unit (even though it's inconvenient) because there really aren't many more places for them to go.
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I had them in big boxes stashed in various closets and rooms they don’t go into, but I got too worried that they’d stumble on something so now it’s all wrapped and under the tree.
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Up until this year I kept them in the unfinished storage space off our playroom, but DS1 discovered it and called it the “toy hiding place”
This year none of the presents are large so they’re hiding behind clothes in my master closet. My coworker actually has all his Christmas presents delivered to work and stores them in his office. I might give that a try next year...
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So far we just keep them either in our guest room closet or (if they’re larger) in the basement hidden behind things. Our kids never go in the guest room, and they aren’t allowed in the basement alone, so it’s worked so far. DD1 is 5 and so far has no interest in searching for anything, but I’m sure that’ll change in the next couple of years.
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@JennyPenny: Smart! I would consider this too - or just bring them to work as they arrive at the house.
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My daughter is only 1 so I just wrapped them real quick and put them on our mantel. When she gets older probably the basement or attic.
@jennypenny- my mom also sent them to work once we were older. When we were younger she had a car and used to keep presents in her trunk.
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They are not really hidden, just all in the basement which they don't go to a lot. And everything is still in boxes so they can't really see anyway.
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When I was little I "found" some presents under my parent's bed (really I was sitting on the bed swinging my feet, accidentally kicked something because my dad was a bad hider, and looked under the bed to see what I'd kicked). My mom explained it to me that Santa was so, so busy delivering all those toys on Christmas Eve that sometimes he sent some toys to houses ahead of time (but only if the parents said that was ok and they had well-behaved children who wouldn't seek and peek). He would still come on Christmas to fill my stocking and eat cookies, of course, but it saved him some time to send some of the presents beforehand.
I'm super impressed with her quick thinking, haha.
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@JennyPenny: I had everything sent to work one year when we were remodeling our house. It was great! I even stayed late one night and wrapped everything on the conference room table.
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@Corduroy: we put them in the master closet as well but I wrapped them early and put them all under the tree. The tree looks better with presents under it anyway.
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My closet is like a small room with actual clothes storage attached, so I have lots of shelving in there. The gifts go up in a box on top of a 6 ft shelf. The kids couldn't get it unless they dragged in a super tall chair. They pretty much aren't allowed in the closet anyway.
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@Corduroy: right in the laundry room bc you know husband won't go in there
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I don't think my Kindergartener has figured out how to snoop yet. So, I am just using the unlocked closet in my office / spare bedroom on our second floor.
Next year I will probably switch to the one closet on the third floor that can be locked from the outside.
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@Mrsbells: I am hoping that I can go back to putting them under the tree next year. But this year my twins are 16mo. They have already removed the ornaments from the bottom third of the tree. It would be a disaster if I put gifts there too!
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Throughout the year I hide gifts on a shelf in my closet under the clothes but for Christmas everything is piling up on the closet floor. DS (4) knows there are gifts for others there but isn't old enough to snoop around to find things for him. But I need a new plan for next year.
I'm thinking about getting a large plastic tote that I can keep in the garage or laundry room that I can hide things in for next year.
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This year, they're all in the suitcases that we store in our master closet so that nothing looks out of place. But I'm running out of room and have a couple more presents yet to arrive!
@smuckers: A bit different, but my dad and I had a funny ritual when I was in high school. He'd buy my mom's presents and hide them under my bed until I could wrap them and put them under the tree. I love wrapping presents, and my parents really missed that when I moved out.
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@krispi: This is hilarious, because my brother used to ship me presents he bought for his wife directly so I could wrap them for him!
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@krispi: we hide in suitcases too!! We also have a guest bathroom in the finished basement we don’t use so I hide things in the tub all the time
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Loving all the different spots. Right now I have everything in it's opened shipping packaging on top of my dresser. Just small stocking stuff type stuff and it's so out in the open I don't think it would occur to anyone that it's presents. Looks more like return pile. I have some more stuff coming today and some in the back of my van that absolutely needs to be hidden. I think it will go into suitcases since we aren't traveling this year.
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In Amazon boxes top shelf of my closet. But I think I am lucky because my kids aren't likely to go looking. I could probably just say they're presents leave them alone and I think they likely would. Next year I may need to get sneaky because DD is leaning that way the sassy little thing...
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@krispi: suitcases, why didn’t I think of that?? We do travel but it’s always after we open presents at home so it would work much better than my corner of closet plan!
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Guest room closet, but my kids are too little to know to look. My dad used to use the trunk of his commuter sedan which we never went in.
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@krispi: this is what I’m doing this year. It is working great!
I have a couple amazon boxes on a shelf in the garage and I also have a Rubbermaid in my closet that I put in things throughout the year as I get them for bdays etc.
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In the basement... it's unfinished so they don't really have a reason to be down there. DH's presents are hidden on top shelves of the kid's closets and behind my clothes in the closet. We wrap presents from mom and dad early and start putting them under the tree as soon as it's up, so we really only need to hide the Santa gifts.
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We have a storage unit and that's where presents live.
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Everything is just sitting in boxes on top of our guest bed which is on the first floor. There is a baby gate in the doorway so the kids don’t really go in there unattended but my almost 5 year old (and 2 year old too of course) is pretty delightfully unaware of the whole gifts thing. I’m sure things will be different next year!
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We put a keypad on the closet under the stairs. It's so great and worry free!
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I’m boxes in the garage. We moved in recently so boxes aren’t a strange sight and they haven’t commented. There’s one huge teetering pile that no one has noticed haha
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I keep them in the packaging they are mailed in. Gifts that I get in a store I hide in the top of closets out of sight and reach.
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I'm hiding ours tucked in with outgrown clothes and stuff I've piled up to get rid of. So far, so good....
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I hid ours under the spare room bed (LO never looks there) until the tree went up, and then the gifts all went under wrapped. Gifts come from us/others and the stocking is from Santa in our house. We also celebrate Chanukah and don't hide those once wrapped. He's been asking every night if he can open one and we keep reinforcing that he can't under Chanukah starts (or it's Christmas)
but i know next year I have to step up my game! I'll be following for ideas.
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