Woman shares ‘brilliant’ technique for how her family plan Thanksgiving Day

‘So everyone has the same amount of work on a holiday’

A woman has revealed her “brilliant” strategy for planning her Thanksgiving Day festivities with her family.

In a video shared to TikTok last month, a woman named Colleen, who goes by the username @crcederberg, shared a video of the Google Sheet that she created before the holiday. “Okay this is how I do Thanksgiving so my siblings and I don’t kill each other,” she quipped.

“Basically we give every dish a point value from one to three, a cranberry dish is a one, a turkey is a three,” she continued. “And we all draft what dishes we wanna make.”

The spreadsheet – which is called “Thanksgiving 2023 Guide” – includes a task, event type, and time section. Some of the tasks range from vegetable side one, savoury appetiser, stuffing, salad, and potato dish. Event types are described as snack board, dinner served, or apps served.

There were also more guidelines at the start of the spreadsheet, which specified that each person has “complete ownership of assigned tasks” and that they can trade tasks with each other after assignments are drafted. Rules also specified that the recipes for dishes were due by 18 November, before a schedule for when people use the kitchen on Thanksgiving was made.

In the video, Colleen went on to explain that when members of the family aren’t cooking their assigned dishs, they take on different responsibilities in the house to help out.

“We also do this thing called flex kitchen, which means you basically hang out in the kitchen for an hour and your job is to keep the kitchen clean,” she said. “So unloading the dishwasher if it’s ready, or loading it [when needed], helping out people cooking. Whatever it takes to keep the kitchen moving.”

After showing a video of her and her family on a video call to plan Thanksgiving, she ended her video by zooming in on the Google Sheet. The document went on to show that each person had eight points assigned to them, which indicates that everyone was doing their equal part on the holiday.

“This is what it looks like at the end, so everyone has the same amount of work on a holiday, whoop whoop,” she said, referring to how the number of points for each dish indicates how easy or difficult the food is to make.

The TikTok video has quickly gone viral, as it has amassed more than 658,000 views. In the comments, many people went on to praise the spreadsheet, before noting that they’d want to follow it themselves.

“Flex kitchen is brilliant,” one wrote. “I hate dishes but could happily hang in the kitchen for a finite, expected amount of time for whatever is needed.”

“This is genius,” another wrote, while a third added: “My type A personality is obsessed with this. Dear lord, I wish my family was like this lol.”

Other people quipped about how their families wouldn’t necessarily be fans of using the spreadsheet to organise their holiday plans.

“In theory, I like this, but only certain people in my family are good cooks,” one wrote.

“Really makes you wonder what’s worse, having Thanksgiving alone or having to project manage your own family,” another wrote.

“I wish this would work. My family much prefers to be dysfunctional and yell at each other,” a third quipped.

The Independent has contacted Colleen for comment.