If you’ve ever bought a box of greeting cards or holiday cards, you probably have a few leftover from each pack floating around somewhere in your home. Let’s talk about how to use them up.

As the price of stamps continues to rise, it’s becoming less frequent to send and receive cards in the mail.

Which is why you should do it.

First, gather up your cards and while you’re looking for them, gather any stamps. The older US forever stamps are my favorite because it’s a sunk cost and you’re not going to get any cash for them and few people have stamp collections anymore.

Second, grab a stack of Post-It Notes and flip through the cards and postcards you have. If any of them remind you of someone specific, set it aside with a Post-It Note with their name.

This might be a great time to set up a Perpetual Calendar which lists every month and date with any recurring celebrations like birthdays, friend’s anniversaries, and memorable dates such as your first date with a partner, anniversary of beating cancer or starting a business.

Third, you’ll want to gather some data like birthdays and addresses and my preferred way to do the former is Facebook. Most folks have their birthdays listed and you can add them to the Perpetual Calendar. For addresses, it’s best to just reach out and ask.

Try this script: “Hey friend, I was just looking through my contacts and realized I don’t have your address. Can you send it to me? I’d love to put something in the mail for you :)”

As we get closer to the holiday season, you might want to focus on holiday cards and I’d encourage you to make this year a modge-podge card send if you’ve got boxes of half used cards piling up. I promise, no one is really going to remember that you sent the snowflake card last year too, the important part is the message inside! If you’re particularly fussy about this kind of thing then consider bagging up all the random leftovers and donating them to a care home for residents.

Finally, you have a stack of cards, even some stamps and people who might like to receive a handwritten card from you. How do you get them out the door? I recommend setting up one day a week when you grab a card from the stack, write a note and put it in the mailbox. Dripping cards out this way is less stressful than trying to mail cards to 20-40 people at a time (there’s a reason we procrastinate this chore at the holidays!) and it’s a nice surprise for the recipient.

You don’t need to do cards only at birthdays, in can often be more special to send a card randomly.

Postcards are fun too! You can send them with “remember when I went on this trip?” or just “thinking you’d love this postcard of (location).”

If you’re reading this and thinking “I’ll never do that…” then it’s your sign to take the cards you’ve accumulated and donate them to someone who wants them!