So last year was a total disaster because my six year old ended up getting that same exact Lego City fire station from three different relatives and honestly it was so awkward trying to explain it to my mother in law who spent like sixty bucks on it. We live in a pretty small two-bedroom in Chicago so we literally dont have the closet space to just keep duplicates and hide them away for later birthdays or whatever. I started looking into how to fix this for this year since the holidays are coming up fast and I really want to have a system in place before the big sales start next week.

I did some digging online and saw people suggesting shared Google Sheets but honestly I tried that for a family reunion once and it was a nightmare. My dad and a couple of my aunts just could not figure out how to edit it on their phones and they kept accidentally deleting columns or just giving up and texting me anyway which defeats the whole purpose. Then I looked at apps like Giftster or Elfster but I feel like asking my 80-year-old grandma to go through a whole registration process and manage an account is just asking for trouble. She barely handles her email as it is and I dont want it to feel like we're being too demanding or making it feel like a transaction instead of a nice family thing.

I just want something where everyone can see what has already been claimed without it being a huge technical hurdle for the less tech-savvy folks in the group. I feel like there has to be a middle ground between a messy group text thread that everyone mutes and a complex database. Does anyone have a system that actually works for a big group with different comfort levels with technology? Or like a specific way to organize a group chat that doesnt get totally buried or cause people to buy the same thing by mistake?