No More UFOs! Get-Em-Done Strategies for Homemade Gifts

Scanning a list of handmade craft gifts is something like reading a cookbook: it makes you hungry! Whether you wander the crafts store, settle in at the library's craft bookshelf, or flip through holiday magazines, visions of bright and beautiful gifts follow one after the other.

Give in to that impulse, and you're likely to find yourself drowning in UFOs: Un-Finished Objects.

How to cut through the creative chaos and stay anchored so you'll finish the job? Try these tips to organize--and finish!--crafted gifts.

Get-Em-Done Strategies for Homemade Gifts

If you're bitten by the craft bug, it's easy to go all out for the holiday season. Too often, though, homemade gifts fall by the wayside, unloved, unfinished and ungiven. Try these ideas to keep crafting gifts within bounds--and budget and timeframe, too.

Apply the Rule of Four This simple strategy will cut to the crafting chase ... and ground you in the midst of crafting-magazine intoxication.

Go to the location where you store unfinished crafts projects. Count the number of UFOs. Are there more than four, or is any unfinished work over four years old?

If so, apply the Rule of Four. No new crafts this year--finish the pending projects before you buy one more hank of floss.

Think theme. Lovely as it is to be a crafting grasshopper, pick a single crafting theme when you plan each season's holiday gifts. Will this be the year for knitted scarves? If so, make them in multiples. The project will go faster with practice, unused yarn from one project can be repurposed to the next, and you'll only need to invest in a single set of tools.

Schedule regular crafting time. The quickest way to create a UFO (Un-Finished Object)? Forget to add crafting time to each week's activities. Sure, the glow of creativity burns bright in the crafts store, but that light will go out for your project unless you set aside time to tend it. Work daily or weekly crafting time into your schedule to see crafted gifts through to completion.

Go with the flow. Many crafts lend themselves well to small bits of time--so where you can, pack the crafts bag and take the current project along with you. Knitting, needlework and even scrapbook doodling or journaling can be done while waiting for appointments or supervising children's play in the park.

Track progress with a "Gifts To Make" list. The simplest way to keep track of gifts-in-progress? Make and keep a Gifts To Make inventory list. Reviewed weekly, it'll remind you of planned homemade gifts. Get crafting!