Writing Thank You Notes: Really? Do I have to?

Holy cow will I be writing thank you notes forever?!  It seems like it never ends.  Wedding, baby showers, baby gifts, birthday gifts, Christmas presents.  I’m not actually complaining about people’s generosity; I am floored by how generous people are, and hope I am as generous in return.   

But now that we’re through the holidays as well as my daughter’s first birthday we have a basement full of toys and I have a full page of people I need to thank for it.  Thank you notes are something that weigh on me and mostly because I feel as though people don’t care if they get one.  Nor do I always get one from people that I give gifts to, so why should they get one from me?  “It doesn’t matter what other people do Sarah” (that was my mother talking).  So is it over-kill to write a hand written note or will an email suffice?  Sometimes I do both, which is serious over-kill but it is because my mother’s voice (she is very much alive by the way, but her voice is in my head a lot) tells me that it needs to be hand-written, so even if I write a quick email thank you, which is mostly a ‘hey, thanks we got your gift in the mail’ notification; I still write one and send it snail mail. 

I do appreciate it when people write me a thank you note, so I suppose I will ignore the ones that don’t and continue on my path of being appreciative.  Plus I do really like the cute personalized stationary you can buy which makes it marginally less tedious, and my handwriting does need the practice.