Tips for Avoiding Unnecessary Gifts

This is an updated, more comprehensive version of an earlier post entitled, “How to Politely Handle Unwanted Gifting.”

It’s the time of year… for unwanted and unnecessary gifts.

With the planet in crisis, folks struggling financially, and families grappling with an excess of clutter in their homes, I’d argue that it’s time we more widely accept and respect one’s decision to firmly avoid giving and receiving gifts. 

But how do we kindly tell a child’s relatives to stop sending toys? What do we do about well-intended friends who insist on giving “something!”? What solutions are there for rehousing the unwanted gifts that inevitably make their way through the door, despite the recipients wishes?  And what are some unique gifts that won’t further contribute to overflowing households, and — inevitably— landfills, which have a greater impact on disenfranchised and marginalized populations? (See Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility by Dorceta E. Taylor.)

Since living in our cottage, having our first child, and learning more about the climate emergency, we began gently telling our friends and family that the absolute best gift they can give our children is an inhabitable planet for their generation and those that follow, and that giving random stuff doesn’t help them in the long run. 

For years, this conversation was easy for us, as most people knew that we lived in a tiny house that couldn’t accommodate excessive belongings. Now that we’ve moved into a space over twice the size (~900 sqft), we predict that we’ll have to remind folks that even though our square footage has increased, we still have the same views regarding gifting.

We know that everything sent our way is usually acquired with so much love, but we believe that the impact of the items (from the manufacturing, to workers’ rights, to packaging, to transport, to haphazard placement within our home, to eventual disposal of some sort,) ultimately matters more than the intent.

For folks who take affront, and/or just don’t quite understand our reasoning, I suggest or give a copy of The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, and/or Aja Barber’s book, Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism. 

Of course it needs to be acknowledged that to ward off gifting of this nature is a privilege, as so many people are living unhoused and without the basic necessities. But, as Barber wrote* in an Instagram post, “The things which are said to us in childhood normalize living in a world with inequality… “ (ie: “Be grateful for your food / gifts, because so many people are going without!”) So instead of tricking ourselves into believing that we should simply continue to accept unnecessary gifts and keep our thoughts to ourselves, we’ve instead started pointing the folks who wish to convey their love in tangible form in the direction of nonprofits such as The RightWay Foundation, which are in constant need of financial and product donations.

We are, however, always happy to receive children’s books, knowing that our kids will explore them thoroughly for years, and that we can ultimately pass them along to other children, a library, or a local school once they’re no longer being read.

We also embrace the idea of gifting experiences, such as museum or garden memberships / admissions, Airbnb Experiences, digital subscriptions, local food and beverage, and other such presents that support an organization or small business while also providing our family or others with a new adventure of some sort. When it comes to regifting unwanted items, I look at it this way: If a giver circles back and asks me to reveal the whereabouts of a present they once gave us, that relationship is probably one that needs some reconsidering or deep work. And besides, there are so many people, families and organizations in need of certain goods that I feel no guilt in passing along a thing we do not need here, and giving it instead to someone who can put it to good use. 

When rehousing an item, we’ve discovered that it’s extremely important to first verify that an organization can indeed put it to specific use, otherwise it is statistically destined for a landfill. Hopefully the original gift-giver would understand and support that action. 

’Tis, after-all, the season to share.

(*Reference to a post by Aja Barber entitled, “Where do out human rights and and others begin?”)