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I still write thank you notes.

There, I said it. Apparently, this makes me old-fashioned. But maybe you’re old-fashioned, too? Maybe you love showing the people who are kind to you that you appreciate their efforts, their generosity, or their innate value as human beings. And hey, Mr. Rogers wrote thank you notes (remember, he wrote one to Mr. McFeely?), and Mr. Rogers the coolest thing right now.

I fully admit that I haven’t hand-written a regular letter in at least ten years, and probably have written no more than a handful in the past twenty years. But a thank you note? Well, Paper Mommy taught me well.

Some people remember childhoods being forced to sit, glumly, prevented from playing with new presents until a thank you note was sent to Aunt Gertrude for the itchy sweater. Some of us (ahem, even in the second half our centuries on earth) are prodded with, “And of course you wrote a thank you note, right?” (Yes, Paper Mommy.) But the concept of a thank you note should be imbued with the delight of appreciation, not the weight of obligation.

I’m not sure I even appreciated the value of a thank you note until I was in my 30s and realized I’d slowly stopped receiving them. But thank you notes are great. Think of all the emotional heft given to the importance of gratitude journals:

The Benefits of a Gratitude Journal and How to Maintain One

Gratitude Journal: 67 Templates, Ideas, and Apps for Your Diary

Turn Pain to Joy: 11 Tips for a Powerful Gratitude Journal

The Ultimate Guide to Keeping a Gratitude Journal

120 Gratitude Journal Prompts to Create More Thankfulness in Your Life

If gratitude is good for us, if it helps us see things in a more positive light, imagine how much it could do for the objects of our gratitude, the people who give us reasons to be grateful!

Not to worry; this post isn’t a guilt trip for those who don’t write them. It’s a guidepost for how to quickly show your gratitude and get on with your life even when you rarely write something without a keyboard or phone in hand. 

ORGANIZE YOUR THANK YOU NOTE

You already know how to write “Dear Ms. So-and-So” or “Hi, BFF!” And I’m sure you have a sense of when it’s appropriate to sign with “Best regards, Chris” vs. “In gratitude, Jane” vs. “xoxoxox, Pookie.” (And yes, your BFF will probably be delighted to get an actual thank you note from her Pookie.)

• Start with gratitude. “Thank you.” Whether someone writes, “Thank you for the book” or “I am so appreciative of the time you took to explain the new credentialing rules,” recipients know they are being valued. Warm, meet fuzzy.
• Mention details. If you like the gift, you can say, “This is the perfect deelybopper and I’m so excited to have it.” If you don’t like it, say, “I’ve never seen anything with such intricate detailing.”
• Allude to the future. Anything from “The book is on the top of my to-read pile for my vacation” to “I will keep the advice you gave me at dinner in my mind as I choose my future school/career/mate/car.” (It doesn’t say you’ll follow the advice, and only you have to know that the truth is you’ll be remembering that advice so you can take the opposite path.)
• End with gratitude. Some things bear repeating.

For an informal thank you note, that’s all that’s needed. (For a more formal letter, you will add a more formal salutation and signature, and flesh out each of those points into a brief paragraph, but it’s all the same theory.)

ORGANIZE YOUR THANK YOU NOTE ACCESSORIES

In order to send a thank you note, you need three more things:

• The recipient’s address

For some of us, managing writing the thank you note is easy, but finding where to send it may keep you from writing post-Christmas thank you notes until July. Please don’t depend on having saved the envelope from a birthday card to find a return address months later.

Address books are great if you’re under 20; beyond that, you likely have hometown friends, college friends, colleagues from prior workplaces, current networking contacts, and so on. You likely know too many people who move far too often to keep a paper address book that covers all contingencies.

I have a confession.

I never know my best friend’s address. She and I haven’t lived in the same city for 30 years, and she moves much more often than I do. We talk on the phone a few times a week, text on most days, but since her children have grown and photos are digital, Amazon acts as our go-between for most tangible things. A few months ago, a thank you note I sent her was returned by the post office. She’d moved in August, and I sent the note to her old address. Because she’s my best friend, we laughed about it without cringing, but if your note to your spouse’s boss, thanking her for a lovely meal, got returned and you had to start all over again, you’d be groaning.

Pick ONE place where addresses will live. For me, even though I’m a paper doll, that’s my Apple Contacts app. Whether I’m on my Mac, iPhone, or iPad, everyone’s contact information is accessible. (I use Microsoft Outlook, which means I have an extra hoop through which to jump if I want to remember to add email addresses to physical addresses and phone numbers, but Contacts still works for me.)

Whether you keep a Google spreadsheet or an Evernote template or a document in Dropbox or use your iOS or Android system for keeping everything synced, create a system for maintaining people’s addresses. Update it every time someone moves, or maybe have Siri or Alexa remind you to tweet or post a Facebook message on the 17th of whatever month you choose, each year, to say, “Hey, if you’ve moved in the last year, text me your address so I absolutely have it!” Better safe than sorry.

• Stationery

Most people fall into one of two camps: there’s either nothing in their house nicer than the back of a receipt and an unused electric company payment envelope or there are piles and boxes and bags of greeting cards tucked all over the house. (We professional organizers truly have seen it all!) To make sure you have WHAT you need WHEN you need it, check out this classic Paper Doll post: 

Paper Manners Matter: Cut Card Clutter & Store Social Stationery

(And shhhh, don’t tell anyone, but I’ve started purchasing some very pretty card packs from the dollar store near my house. Eight cards for a dollar mean that unless you are really, really popular, you can inexpensively go the better part of the year without having to yield to the temptations of a card shop.)

• Postage

My post office is within walking distance of my house, but if getting to a post office is inconvenient for you, you can purchase stamps online. (Perhaps not surprisingly, even from Amazon.) Be forewarned, the post office arranges stamps by their names for the individual themes, and they aren’t always obvious. I was looking for my recent favorites, stamps with drawings of various types of Mexican food, but was having no luck searching “Mexican food,” “food,” etc. I recently went to dinner with my Nashville colleague, Liz Jenkins, CPO® (owner of A Fresh Space) and her husband, and thought it would be fun to put an empanada or some flan on the envelope. (Edited: Found them! Look for Delicioso! Update: As of December 2019, this stamp is only available as a framed print.)

In fact, in researching this post, I found that the US Postal Service has a stamp honoring Mr. Rogers, and a sheet of 20 will now be finding its way to Paper Doll HQ.

All this said, thank you notes (or cards, or letters, or invitations) do not have to be sent through the mail. Sometimes, time is of the essence. Sometimes the weather outside is frightful, and the idea of going out to buy cards or invitations or stationery and then mailing what you’ve written is even more frightful. Sometimes you lack confidence in your handwriting.

That’s OK. Paper Doll has you covered. In our next post, we’re going to talk about Paperless Post, one of the snazzy ways to send your thoughts so they get there quickly without looking like every other newsletter, bank statement, and email in the inbox. 

Until then, I thank you for being a Paper Doll reader, and truly appreciate the time you take reading my posts, whether you find them via Facebook, Twitter, your RSS reader, or from searching the web for a keyword that has nothing to do with what I’ve written about when I’ve made weird offhanded comments. (Admit it. You Googled deelybopper.) Until next time, Paper Doll is grateful for your readership, whether you’ve been around the whole eleven years or if this is your very first post.