Gifts That Don’t Clutter Up the Closets

I don’t know if it’s because we’ve always lived in relatively small spaces. Maybe it’s because we have 3 kids close in age all of the same gender. But at some point along our parenting path we decided that we simply didn’t need any more stuff.

I’ve always been a minimalist when it comes to decor, I’ve worked on it in the clothing realm and there’s something that just makes me so happy when I have an empty shelf here and there.

We never want to live beyond our means, in fact, we want to live below our means, because giving and helping are things we always want to be able to say yes to. This means not spending a bunch of money on knick knacks or fast fashion. It also means not wanting to clutter up our kids rooms and lives with all of the things that they may think they need.

Spoiler alert for parents with littles: They don’t need all of the things. They’ll never play with all of the things. Most of the things will be fun for about 3 days and then forgotten.

Add that up with the whole landfill debacle and we’ve decided that most often when we give gifts to our children it’s going to be in the form of an experience over toys. Turns out, when we do this, they can even remember from year to year what they received as a gift. If you want to be disheartened as a parent, simply ask your child what that awesome thing was that you got them for their birthday last year. Odds are, they have no clue!

This was our youngest boys latest birthday gift. Baseball tickets!

It is sometimes hard to come up with various age appropriate experiences but we’ve managed to find a number of good ones along the way.

Some of our favourites when they were little were trips to a zoo in another city, maybe one bigger or better than our local one, excursions like Science World or even the Waterslides which we don’t just do as a norm. When you’re a family of 5 these things can cost well over $100.00 for a day and so we make them special and give them as gifts.

We’ve also gifted nights in a hotel, which they think is super fun (think pool, morning cartoons, extravagant breakfast – all out of the norms for us!), concert tickets to a band that they’re into, or tickets to a play. We usually save the play for a Christmas gift because it’s a fun thing to do together over the holidays.

One year for Christmas we nixed presents altogether (except for the hoodie/sock/book combo which are really necessities) and went on a snowboarding vacation. Another birthday we gifted hockey or baseball tickets.

All of these add up to be fun family times that our kids value, appreciate, and talk of often. I assure you, they never talk about how exciting it was to get that video game 5 years ago or that monster truck that time. Those things are sitting buried at the bottom of a closet somewhere and long forgotten. But the memory of the time spent together through experiences are something they drawn on time and again.

If you’re worried your kids will miss the stuff – they might at first. But when you make the event extra fun, choose something you know they’ll love and talk about it for months after, they’ll soon realize the value of it too.

Topic Tuesday {Gifts for Valentine’s Day}

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, actually I think we’re on the straight stretch heading toward it, there isn’t even a turn before it gets here!

I usually try and steer clear of a ton of candy for my kids on these types of holidays.  Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter are all highly sugared as it is so I figure I don’t really need to be a contributor.  Besides, when they were all in Elementary school they would come home with gobs of suckers and chocolate from their classmates.

I also don’t feel like these types of holidays need to be huge in the gift department but I do like to have a little surprise for them in the morning when they wake up.  In the past I’ve gotten them each a book or a game but now that they’re bigger the books they want are ex.pen.sive so we use the library route instead and I think they may have every game known to man.

We’ve also done little things like Quicksilver wallets or a DC belt along with some stickers to plaster all over their skateboard ramps.  We’ve done gift cards to the local arcade or even to Starbucks but with a certain littles dietary restrictions those aren’t even possible this year.

So I was stumped!  Our kids truly need nothing.  They even said so before Christmas when Grandma’s were asking for gift ideas.  They scratched their heads and sat with paper and pen ready to write  a list but instead looked up and said, “There’s nothing we really need.”  Yay!  It was for sure a proud mothering moment!  They certainly don’t have everything that some of their friends do but they recognize they have enough.

What do you get 3 boys who can’t even figure out what they want?  Well, I went back to the classic that I’ve stayed away from for the past 13 years.  Candy.

I’ve also tried to teach my boys quality over quantity when it comes to candy so I got out some mason jars and put a few pieces of their favourite fair trade chocolate into it.  That didn’t quite fill it so I added a few things that I knew they would think are fun.  Some red twirly straws and some mechanical pencils.  They’re obsessed with both but I never buy them.  I’m sort of practical and mechanical pens are a) more expensive b) break easier c) run out of lead and then we never remember to refill.  So I know they’ll be thrilled with a few of these little treasures.

What about you?  What do you do for your kids for Valentine’s Day?  Do you sugar them up or stick with other gifts or bypass this holiday altogether?