Skip to main content

Great small gifts

Image
By
Often Christmas is about more, more, more. More spending, more gifts, more stuff. It's tricky for the person who is happy with less stuff.

Three cheers for my family

My loved ones have done exceedingly well this year. All the gifts I received on Christmas day could fit in one envelope - not including those that fitted in my stomach ;) .

My free e-book 10 Great Gifts for People who Don't Want Stuff has a great range of gift ideas. Here are specific examples that are giving me joy rather than clutter.

Hand-made gifts

It's an unexpected treat to get something someone has put their time into making.

A friend (and her 8 and 6 year old daughters) made us this collection of soaps. We'll appreciate them as we use them up.


Held up to the light, they're amazingly colourful and bright. Even the bag they came in (courtesy of the kids) was fantastically cute.


Vouchers

Vouchers can be hit and miss. The tip is to go broad if you don't know the person well. Only go for a specific niche if you're dead sure that's what they want. Otherwise it's just a gift to the corporation as the voucher sits unused.

The hardware store voucher I received might normally have missed the mark but our new apartment could do with some energy-saving lights. The broadness of the voucher saved the day and made it a gift that is appreciated.

Experience

A book of 35 walks in my city. Yeah it's a physical present but relatively small and should provide a great number of experiences for my wife and I. Some of the places I haven't even heard of yet. It's like a little "lonely planet" guide for my own city.

Experiences are great because they create memories. Memories are great because they last a very long time - and often get better with age.

My wife knows this well and gave me a voucher for an activity we'll do together (more on that another time). My sister-in-law and brother-in-law gave us a voucher for sports tickets. They go to almost every Brisbane Lions home game. It's our choice which one we attend as their guests. (Update: Here's how it went.)

Food

My sister is very generous with presents. Sometimes overwhelmingly so. This year she combined generosity with her baking skills to cook up a storm. Great idea.

She fills those containers to the max. Whatever it doesn't have in fancy-schmancy presentation it makes up for in quantity and sweetness.


Also in food category, my wife made us a special Christmas brunch before we went out to the extended family Christmas event. No photo of that - I went straight for the cutlery before the camera ;)

Focusing on joy

The traditional (commercial) image of Christmas is a giant tree surrounded with large shiny presents wrapped with a bow. You see it at the shopping centre and on practically every Christmas movie.

These presents might not fit that expectation. But they bring more joy. Isn't that what counts?

PS. You may also want to read about my extended family's new tradition about gifts.
Read more about:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to waste a year's wages

By
A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c
4 comments
Read more

Don't dump on charities

By
Netflix causes mass dumping. Here's an alternative. January is usually a big month for physical donations to charity. In 2019 it's been over-the-top (literally) as charity donation bins have been overflowing with items. The Netflix series "Tidying Up" by famous declutterer Marie Kondo (see her book ) has inspired many to declutter their homes. But in the process they've cluttered the streets. What's so bad about donating? When the bins overflow the extra items are thrown away. Having been in the weather, the rain and on the ground, they are classified as contaminated and cannot be sold. To make it worse, much of what fills the bins is not good enough to sell, and is also dumped. Bad donations hurt charities 13 million dollars. That's how much it costs charities to deal with all the junk we dump on them - 60,000 tonnes a year. Lifeline says half its stores have stopped accepting donations. We might think we're helping, but that's a lot
4 comments
Read more

This could all be yours

By
This cartoon kind of happened to me on the weekend. Joking about death My dad has his own unique sense of humour. Flippantly he joked that when he passes away, the first thing I'll need to do is get a rubbish skip (maybe two) and jam it full with all the junk from the garage. I was reminded of Marie Kondo, who says in her book that we have to deal with items either now or later; so it might as well be now. For people who have retired, I guess there's a third option: Ignore it for a few more decades and let descendants deal with it. Don't get me wrong - my dad has plenty of years left yet. But from his joke I'm guessing he's reasonably happy to let it all sit there while he enjoys retired life. Why not deal with it? I can kind of understand. It's an overwhelming task (even to look at). There's also the "I might need that" factor. Which is fair enough, but even if an item is needed, is it findable in amongst everything else? About half the
3 comments
Read more