The Christmas season seems to get longer every year, but no less busy. Fortunately there are a ton of great timesavers and life hacks you can take advantage of to get your holiday to do list in shape fast.

1. Going black Friday Shopping? Hit all of your turns easier.

If you don’t believe this, there is a myth busters episode you can consult. What you need to do, after you first get all of your coupons and stores together, is take a map or smartphone map and mark each stop. When Black Friday comes you are going to drive between each of those stops in clockwise order, making a big circle, starting with the most important door buster store. Why? Because going clockwise means that you will only be making right-hand turns, which are significantly faster than left hand turns and will get you to where you need to go much faster in heavy traffic conditions. You can save up to an hour of waiting if you have enough stores on the list, and their parking lots are as busy as I always expect them to be.

2. Get a nice set of Christmas cake carriers.

How does this save you time? Because if you have one then you can head to the store on the way to different Christmas parties and simply buy a cake or other desert and put it in your carrier. No one will question it and it will look like you put in the time and effort to make a homemade desert for the party. Of course, the carrier doesn’t have to be decorated for Christmas, but it helps.

3. Simplify the Christmas lights. While big displays are pretty, there is an element of diminishing returns to them. Putting in four hours of work stringing them up will impress people about as much as eight hours, resulting in one second of ‘Ohhh’ before they move on. You will want decorations of course, but you are just as well off with a wreathe and one line of lights across the top of your house. Or even better, put your tree in the window and leave it on at night with an electric candle in each of the windows. It is classic, beautiful, and so much faster.

4. Go with a pre-cut or plastic tree instead of a cut your own.

5. Use an online template to make your Christmas Cards

Christmas cards are a beautiful touch, but it you struggle with being creative just go online to a service (we recommend MiDesign@MichaelsTM) that has ready-to-use custom holiday card templates available. Enter your own text, drop in a digital photo from your computer or any online album, and have them printed and shipped to your local Michaels store so that you can pick them up after work, or just send them straight home.

6. Print your card addresses.

Use a program like Microsoft Word’s mail merge to input your Christmas Card mailing list directly to your printer, so that you can print labels with the addresses, or just print them to the cards directly. Faster, neater, and with less chance of carpal tunnel.