Works for Me Wednesday: Using Froogle for Christmas Wish Lists

It's Wednesday - time for another "Works for Me!" tip, inspired by the blog carnival/series at We are THAT Family. Check out this week's tip carnival here.

If you have a Google or Gmail account, then Froogle is worth checking out! Our family (and extended family!) has used Froogle for the last few years as a way of composing Christmas wish lists. For hard-to-shop-for people, like my tech-oriented brother, or my "I have everything I need!" husband, it is a wonderful way to avoid giving them, "I'm clueless..." items year after year.

Froogle is an especially useful tool for a number of reasons:

1. It has the searching "reach" of the Google search engine.
2. It offers you the chance to filter your results by relevance, price, store, and other categories.
3. You can add an item to your private Froogle "Shopping List", and share it as part of your public "Wish List" at will. This way you can track items of interest without everything being listed on your "Wish List".
4. Froogle lets you send a link to family and friends for purposes of sharing your wish list.
5. Froogle covers the inventory of almost all major retailers online, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, J.Crew, L.L. Bean, Lands' End, Nordstrom, Zappos, etc.
   

I love Froogle because, as items occur to me year-round, I can add them to my Froogle list, preventing last minute "What do you want for Christmas?" scrambles. In my case, it is often music or books that spark my interest - but I make it plain to my family that in most cases, used copies are more than fine. Froogle also gives folks the chance to surf your wish list far in advance of a birthday or Christmas, so they can also bargain-hunt on particular items instead of being tied to paying retail on December 19th.

As for my young daughter, I keep a very book-heavy Froogle wish list in her name, so that family members can see a list of classics, old favorites, and relatively new titles that aren't yet in her collection. If a book at another child's house catches my daughter's attention, I also can try to add the title to the Froogle list later.

Have you tried using Froogle? What wish-list strategies work for you?
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