The 10 second $1 way to never lose a DIsney Gift Card!

I'm going to start off by saying I  love my kids. Like so many other kids though, they (and okay, I do too!) suffer from Dory's short term rembery loss. In fact, I'm pretty sure she's my Spirit Animal. When we go to check e cheese, well...that bucket of coins, or the new card that holds the credits will get left somewhere... (hence my unfair rule of mom keeps them now!) or we often hear, as we stroll through Walmart, "Mom, where's my hat?!"  and then there's the frantic dash through the store trying to find where the hat, or the stuffed animal, or a drink or anything else got put no one can remember where. 

There are challenges when my boys want to be grown up enough to go and do things for themselves like have an entire year's savings on a gift card but have Dory tendances. (Sorry kids, that was all my genes!)

In thinking about our next Disney Trip, I wanted to be prepared, and proactive, so I came up with a plan. I WAS going to let them be in charge of their own spending money, via gift cards, but in a way that would be grown up for them, and reassuring for me! 

​Some thinking, a happenstance glance at the keys station at Home Depot and a 10 second solution was born to make both adults and kids happy! All for around $1!

There are two ways to make this, as a lanyard style, or as a bracelet style. The great part about this, is different colored bracelets, and different lanyards mean easily telling who has what giftcard. 

Supplies needed: 

Gift card
​Hole punch (and strong person to punch the hole!) 
coil keychains (I bought a dozen on Amazon for $3
lanyards (use what you have, or buy one. Lots of place have $1 ones) 
badge protectors ($1.50 at Walmart for 12)

​Assemble your products! 

Now this is important! You can't just punch willy nilly. Flip over the card, and DON'T punch the magnetic strip or any of the numbers. The upper left corner is usually a safe place.  If you want to do the lanyard style, you can skip the hole punching. 
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Slide on the keychain! Or, slip the card into a badge holder, attach lanyard. 10 seconds, around $1 and the perfect way to give kid's independence, not mix up anyone's spending money, AND a worry free way to make sure the gift card won't get lost on the way to the register! 

Since there are so many different colors and styles the keychains and lanyards come in, it's possible for a large group of people to each have their own totally unique to them way to keep track of their money! I love the idea that I can toss these in the backpack, and take 5 seconds to pull out the blue one and know it belongs to one kid, instead of squinting at fading marker where I'd written a name to identify the owner, dropping it back in because it wasn't the one I wanted. Time saver, and sanity saver! 

What do you think? Would this work for you, or your family?