5 Tips for Holiday Gift Planning Using Pinterest

Pinterest is a great tool for organization. One of the most basic ways to go about organizing your gift ideas using Pinterest boards would obviously be to just assign a board with each person’s name. Or alternatively, you could organize them by group like “Parents,” “Kids,” “Friends” and so on.

Don’t for get to also make use of private boards, as already mentioned. This is especially useful if anyone you’re buying for is already connected to you on Pinterest. To make a private board, simply scroll down to the bottom of your Pinterest profile and choose the “Create a Secret Board” option, or you can also create one by choosing the “Add+” option at the top.

Most hardcore Pinteresters probably already know about the “Pin It!” bookmarklet, but if you don’t, you’re probably going to need it to help you plan your gifts. Pinterest shows you how to do it here. (You basically just drag the “Pin It” button to your toolbar or bookmarks bar.)

Once you have that installed on your web browser, you can click it while browsing any website and it will reveal all the photos on that page so you can choose the one you want and easily pin it to one of your boards. This is great if you’re browsing other online shopping sites like Amazon or eBay and notice something that might make a great gift.

If you’re also on a budget, you can work that budget planning right into your Pinterest gift boards by simply adding a “$” sign in the description with its price. That way, you can easily look at all gift ideas on a board and make your decision based on price if you really need to.

If you look under the "Gifts" section on Pinterest, you'll notice that all of them have prices attached to each photo, and you can actually browse gifts by price. This is great because it gives you the opportunity to browse within Pinterest for great gift ideas instead of sticking exclusively to third party sites.

If you need to add notes, ideas, extra URLs or anything else, simply do so by editing the description of the pin. You can do it as you pin new gift ideas to your board, or you can always go back and do it later.

For example, if you wanted to take into account the shipping cost and delivery of a certain product, you could type in a little note to remind yourself of a deadline date for ordering if you decide to go with that particular gift idea. The editing feature alone is great in comparison to a regular piece of paper list, which you'd probably have to completely rewrite if you wanted to edit notes for your gift ideas.

You probably don’t want to pack your boards with so many pins that you can’t make a decision on what to finally buy for your gift receivers. If you come across a product on Pinterest that you think could make a good gift but aren’t quite sure about it, just hit “Like” on it so you could always go back to it later.

You could also make an entirely separate Pinterest board for your “in between” gift ideas and fill it with stuff you’re on the fence about. That way, you keep all the clutter out of our other boards, but can still go back them if you need to some more time to figure out the best gift ideas!