Easy, creative tips for getting your holiday cards sent

We'll bet that the inventor of the Christmas card, British illustrator John Calcott Horsley, never anticipated that his first commercially printed card in 1843 would be the forerunner of a global phenomenon. In the United States alone, we buy and exchange more than 2 billion (yes, billion) cards between November and December.

The purpose: to send a special greeting and well wishes to family, friends and business associates, particularly those we don't get to see enough during the course of the year. Given the intensity of daily life, the value of sending a card has only increased; how nice is it to receive those notes each year. That said, getting your cards out is a significant source of holiday stress. How can you make this year different? Not surprisingly, a little organization goes a long way.

Sarah's method:

I add one little card duty to my daily to-do list. One day I select a photo. The next, I select a card and order it. The next, I go through my contacts and select every person I want to send a card to and print out the list, etc. The next thing I know, all my cards are written and mailed — without stress — well before Christmas.

We all know intellectually that breaking up big projects into a series of smaller tasks is smart, but inertia is a tough thing to overcome. If you tend to get stuck, just put one small task on your to-do list for tomorrow and cross it off before the day is out. You'll be amazed at how making one little move in the right direction gets the power of inertia working in your favor.

Alicia's ideas:

We really like to have fun with our holiday card, which makes the entire process a lot less onerous. We try to pick a theme for our photograph that sums up the big news for our family for the year.

For example, the two years we lived in Nashville, Tenn., we all dressed up in hillbilly costumes the first year and Elvis costumes the next. At the end of another particularly busy year, we used a photo-editing program to superimpose images of our heads onto different superhero bodies. People want to see what you've been up to, so get creative and think outside the box. The more fun you have with it, the more fun people on the other end will have receiving it.

More tips:

1. Think in Black-and-White

If you're stumped on what kind of card to send, there is something so timeless and beautiful about black-and-white or even sepia-toned photo cards. With digital cameras, getting black-and-white photos is as easy as changing a setting. Make the faces of your family take center stage, have everybody dress up in a white shirt and khakis or jeans. If you want to add a little flair, have each person in the photo hold a letter spelling out a word like "Joy," "Happy"or "Noel."

2. Delegate

If you are living with others, there is no reason you have to shoulder the entire holiday-card project yourself. Look for ways to divide up the tasks, whether it's researching card options or addressing envelopes. Just remember to delegate effectively; you need to be organized enough to have mapped out "due dates" so you aren't scrambling at the last minute.

3. Print Out Addresses

Addressing envelopes is probably the least fun and one of the most time-intensive holiday-card tasks. But that doesn't have to be the case in this digital age. If you keep your contacts organized with software, such as Microsoft Outlook, simply select the people you want to send cards to and print their addresses on labels that you can stick directly to an envelope. What used to take you hours can literally be done in minutes.

In today's time-starved world, nobody will care (or probably even notice, for that matter) that you've printed the address labels. Saving time on the front of the envelope, which just gets thrown out anyway, means you have more time to spend making the written message on the inside of the card special.

The writers are co-founders of Buttoned Up, a company dedicated to helping people get organized.