Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been in major decluttering mode going through Laura’s room before her big move. This exercise opened my eyes to the burden that gift giving puts on both the giver and the recipient. It’s time to consider different ways to show our love than unneeded gifts.

We started this decluttering project when Laura was home at Easter. At that time, we dealt with the low-hanging fruit. I’ve been sorting through some things on my own but needed her input on everything else.

Love is…not filling their house with stuff

A lot of of what remained in Laura’s room is clothes, books, CDs and video games, and stuffed animals. Then there is an assortment of trinkets and knickknacks given to her as gifts over the years.

Our society equates gift giving with love, but why do we need a physical gift to show our love? How much time do we spend stressing over “the perfect gift”? How much money do we spend on gifts people really don’t need or want? And what do we do with things given to us with the best of intentions that just don’t fit our lives anymore?

All of this recalled those “Love is…” cartoons that were everywhere back in the 1970s. I concluded that love is…not filling their house with stuff, so I created one of my own.

No more postponed decisions

No matter where all these things came from, it was crunch time for all the stuff in Laura’s room. The expense of shipping to Australia is prohibitive, so we had to decide what to keep and what to let go.

Some decisions were easy. We quickly filled a huge garbage bag with stuffed animals to donate. Most of them were like new. Similarly, most clothes and books don’t carry a lot of sentimental weight so they were easy to part with.

It got trickier with things like trinkets and collectibles. Most were sitting in boxes in her closet or gathering dust on shelves. And almost all of them were given as gifts.

Most of what Laura wanted to keep were pictures, special books, and a few mementos. We’ve put those aside and we will take them to her when we visit. It might take a few trips to get them all there.

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Better ways to show love than gift giving

All of this led to an interesting conversation about the burden of gift giving. We concluded that it mostly just creates stress for the giver, and unwanted stuff for the receiver. It’s time to rein it in.

Over the years, we have drastically cut back on gift giving. After going through this exercise, I have resolved to never gift another trinket or collectible. There are better ways to show love. Here are some ideas to consider.

• Do something fun together. Talk to friends and family about forgoing gifts and planning a fun activity instead. Ultimately, the gift of presence is better than any presents. And you never need to declutter memories.
• Make charitable donations. When our niece’s twins had their first birthday party, she specifically requested no gifts. I applauded her for having the courage to so this—and wished I had done the same when our kids were small. We donated the money we would have spent on a gift to a children’s charity. Guess what! We were the only guests at the birthday party who respected her wishes. Every other guest brought a gift.
• Give money. With our girls both living far away, shipping gifts for birthdays and Christmas is no longer an option. From now on, we’ll give them money that they can use to buy something they really want or need.
• Gift your time. People are stretched pretty thin these days. Most people would appreciate the gift of childcare, lawn care or snow removal more than an unwanted gift.  
• Choose consumables. If you really can’t resist giving a physical gift, opt for consumables. My only caution in this area is avoiding personal care items. As someone who is scent-sitive, there’s nothing worse than getting heavily perfumed gifts that I can’t use.

If you’re serious about reducing the burden of gift giving, there’s still time to implement this before Christmas! Talk to friends and family. They’ll probably be glad they didn’t need to be the one to bring it up.

Do you have other gift giving alternatives? Drop me a comment below to let me know.