066: Christmas Gift Giving Challenge

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Gift giving at Christmastime—or any other time—is meant to be a joyous occasion, but often ends up with a lot of chaos and stress. We hold on to traditions that no longer work and often spend more money than we should. In today’s podcast episode, I share some ideas and stories with you from our own creative gift giving—both for simplicity and frugality’s sake—that will hopefully inspire you to do something different this year as a Christmas gift giving challenge.
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Summary of today’s episode:
Weird traditions that we hold on to/things we do:
- Staying involved in big gift exchanges after the family gets too big
- Feeling like we have to purchase a gift for someone “because it’s Christmas”
- Buying gifts for people who need nothing
- Buying gifts that people do not need and will not use
- Forgetting why you’re giving a gift
Realities to think about:
- Christmas changes as we get older. There is a huge difference between gifts as a kid and gifts as an adult
- One click shopping has changed what “it’s the thought that counts” means.
Ideas for how to change your Christmas:
- cut down your gift list
- exchange names
- put an age limit on extended family gift exchanges
- cut yourself out of extended family gift exchanges completely—seriously, you can do this
- “something you want, need, wear, read”
- give experiences instead of things
- Secret Santa
- “White Elephant”
- things that only fit in a stocking
Our favorite ideas for exchanging (stories in the podcast!):
- Only exchange second hand gifts
- Only exchange homemade gifts
- Refill the stuff the receiver uses all the time (groceries, lumber, feed, etc.)
Links referenced in today’s show:
Episode 064: Homestead Decluttering – The Why and How
Farmish homesteading group on MeWe
A Farmish Kind of Life on Facebook
A Farmish Kind of Life on Instagram
A Farmish Kind of Life on Pinterest
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