3 Ways Honour Unwanted Gifts without Keeping Them
When my husband and I got married in 2015 we had a gift registry list (the day we ran around with the pricing gun was the best!). However, friends of my parents and distant connections didn’t know about it and went off book… so we got a few traditional wedding gifts we didn’t need. The most bizarre was the pastry fork set. Actually, it was 5 pastry fork sets! Now, I don’t know about you but I’m not one for a 30-person pastry party and, even if I was, I would probably just use regular forks.
Arnotts is the king of smancy tableware
So how did we deal with and honour 5 boxes of forks we didn’t need? After all, it can be hard to declutter expensive things. We were very grateful for the gesture and obviously didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so this is what we did - we wrote personalised thank you notes and quietly gave the pastry forks to friends and donated the rest to charity.
We certainly didn’t sneak them as a gift to another couple getting married!
Photo by Moose Photos from Pexels
Giving gifts away that you don’t need does not make you bad or even less grateful - there are kind ways to do it.
Here are some creative ways to give away unwanted presents in a way that honours them and eases your guilt:
(Just so you know: Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on them and buy something I get a small percentage. Thank you for supporting my small business in this way!)
Show them how thankful you are
As I said, giving away gifts does not equal ungrateful. Show how thankful you are for their time, effort and thought with a handwritten card (we all love getting real post these days) and then discretely put the thing in a donation bag. Be careful about giving away to a friend or family in case the gift giver may see it!
Before you send it off you may want to use it once and send a photo of it in action as well - but it’s up to you.
If it has a high monetary value you may wish to sell it on Adverts.ie (Ireland) or Preloved (UK) to get it to a good new home. All of these things can really help ease your decluttering anxiety.
2. Capture the item in a photograph or photo album
If you yourself are having a hard time getting rid of the gift (or other sentimental item) you can create a memory album to honour it. I got this unconventional idea from a guest on Matt D’Avella’s podcast, Comedian Todd Glass, who has a gift book for every year so he can keep his apartment from getting overrun.
One time his friends asked to see the latest gift phonebook and before he realised they spotted a gift that they had given him in there! Not to worry though, they said they were honoured to make it into the book.
Photobox make stunning photo books - upload photos to their website, design a book and it comes in the post.
3. Give the thing new life
I know this doesn’t count as not keeping it, but it will otherwise turn something that is unusable to something that is. Create something new from the old thing i.e. up-cycle it.
Once a friend gave me a large necklace that wasn’t quite my style, so I took off the chain and stitched it onto a vintage bag to jazz it up.
If your cupboard is overflowing with mugs and you get one for Christmas, use it as a small plant pot (just add stones for drainage). There is often a creative solution so the thing doesn’t get wasted, you may just have to change your mindset.
Turn a mug into a plant pot! Just add stones for drainage
Try finding an art studio or charity that collects items to up-cycle - in Dublin we have the Re-Discovery Centre that creates sculptures and runs workshops with reclaimed items.
Next week I’ll tell you how to tell your friends and family what to get you so you get things that you will actually use… and not stress or offend them!
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