Photo Credit Product Spotlight.com.au

Quite a few of my readers have mentioned on different occasions that they have friends and relatives that give their children far too many “clutter” gifts. No matter how much they insist that this stops the gifts just keep on coming. There are many alternative gift ideas that you could suggest they choose. Unfortunately life sometimes gets away from us and when the time is nigh we can’t think of any suggestions to make to these very generous gift givers, that are a great alternative to clutter.

In the past I put together a list of alternative gifts with mostly adults in mind. This list is always available to view by clicking on Guides from the menu bar located above the photo at the top of my blog. When you get into Guides just click on Uncluttered Gift Ideas. Being as our theme for the week has centered around children I think now would be a great time to put together an uncluttered gift guide for children.

In order to do this I will get a list started on this post today and I would love for you to all contribute ideas via comments so we can come up with a great list that we can all refer back to when gift giving time comes around be that birthdays, bar mitzvahs, Christmas, Hanukkah etc. I am sure you all have some great ideas so please share them with us.

Please feel free to make comments also on the items I have begun the list with and the age groups I have split them up into. My children are now almost 21 and 19 and I may have lost my edge when it comes to this topic so I could really do with your help. This may be the case for the wonderful gift givers in your life also so if you are able to make alternate ideas they may be more likely to conform to your way of thinking.

Uncluttered Gift Guide For Children

Ages 0 to 5

• Clothing items
• Education fund deposits (They may not thank you now but they will later)
• Deposit it money into a bank account in the child’s name.
• Memberships to your local Zoo or Children’s museums, abortetum’s etc…
• A special outing (This could include anything from a food treat, a trip to the zoo etc)
• Paying for lessons (music, sports, arts, craft)
• Ingredients and special decoration for cookies to a four or five year old kid so that the kid could bake cookies with the parents. You could actually make an outing of this and take them to the grocery store.

Ages 6 to 12

• Money (To make this gift more special I used to make a clue based treasure hunt for my children and they loved it. I used those plastic snap together Easter eggs to hide the money in.)
• Passes to theme parks
• Education fund deposits (They may not thank you now but they will later)
• Deposit it money into a bank account in the child’s name
• Movie passes
• Educational software (Even though this is an item if looked after it can be easily sold on when grown out of)
• iTune credit
• Sporting equipement
• A special clothing item
• A special outing (This could include anything from a food treat to a ball game, ten pin bowling etc)
• Tickets to a Sporting event, concert…
• Paying for lessons (music, sports, arts, craft)

Ages 13 to 18

• Plane tickets to visit friends or family
• Education fund deposits (They may not thank you now but they will later)
• Deposit it money into a bank account in the child’s name
• Cell phone recharge
• Money
• Passes to theme parks
• Movie passes
• iTune credit
• Take-out gift cards (My daughter loved Starbucks cards at this age group)
• Sporting equipement
• Toiletries (You need to know the child well to get this right though)
• A special clothing item (My son is a skateboarder they wear through skate shoes far too often and they make a great gift)
• A special outing (This could include anything from a food treat to a ball game, ten pin bowling etc)
• Tickets to a Sporting event, concert…
• Paying for lessons (music, sports, arts, craft)

Ages 18 to 25

This age group may be a little older but in my experience they need useful gift more now than ever before. They are often still in college/University, moving out for the first time or just started in their first real career job and aren’t being paid much at this point.

• Money
• Movie passes
• Gas Cards
• Gift Cards
• iTune credit
• Cell phone recharge
• Travel credit (Bus/train passes)
• Sporting equipement
• Plane tickets to visit friends or family
• Education fund deposits
• Educational supplies (Book store credit, nice stationary, leather satchel etc)
• Take-out gift cards (My daughter loved Starbucks cards at this age group)
• Household items (Whether they have move out yet or not because it will happen eventually) (No uni-taskers please)
• Toiletries (You need to know the child well to get this right though)
• Tickets to a Sporting event, concert…
• A special clothing item
• Paying for lessons (music, sports, arts, craft)

Donation Gift Ideas

• Zoo Animals
• Pet shelters
• Kids Sport team equipment
• Food bank (You could actually go grocery shopping together to choose the food)

Cindy has also written some great blogs and left some great comments in the past regarding Children’s birthdays and birthday parties…

Day 252 Kids Birthday Parties

Day 257 Decluttering Kids Birthdays Part 2

Cindy in response to Day 338 ~ I have a large bin of gifts for the children to give for birthday presents… Read more

Today’s Declutter Item

I relinquished my iPod to my son some time ago when his died but surprisingly he didn’t want the pink case. By now I have come to the realisation I am never going to get the iPod back so I have sent the case to the thrift store.

Things that made me happy, made me laugh, made me feel grateful, fascinated me or I thought were just plain awesome.

• Winning $160 at bingo ~ I don’t normally play bingo but my Mum does and it is always fun to go with her when she visits and even more fun when we win.
• Managing to still churn out blog posts while I am busy with my visitors ~ I really hope that they have still been useful and interesting for you my faithful readers.
• I am just happy with life at the moment even if I have been really busy.
• My dad promises to take some great native Australian bird photos for me to share with you on my blog.
• Having lots of plans to look forward to over the coming weeks ~ Including my daughter visiting, going to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, attending the ANZAC day parade on the 25th of April, a weekend in Canberra and a trip to NZ. My oh my, I had better get ahead with my blogging.

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow.

Yesterday  was my son’s 19th birthday and what did I buy him? NOTHING. Yes that is right nothing at least not material things that linger around for years to come. Being a young person he is not rolling in cash so he received the one thing he needed, money.

You may be thinking “what kind of unthoughtful mother is she not even making an effort for her own son’s birthday”. Well I didn’t say I didn’t make an effort. Before I went to work I baked him a lovely chocolate cake with yummy chocolate ganache frosting. I don’t keep candles and that sort of stuff any more but I made a cute happy birthday sign out of some card stock and a rubber stamp and attached it with toothpicks. We also had take-out for dinner from his favourite Mexican restaurant.

The night before his birthday was officially the start of his “birthday week” which means  two things…

1. I do all his chores for the week. So far I have taken out the trash and recycling and put the bins on the street and brought them back in, emptied the dishwasher and  picked up after him a few times. Quite frankly it is easier work than nagging him to do it which is the usual routine.
2. He also gets to make a few “reasonable requests” throughout the week which I can either choose to comply with or not. For instance today he asked for some money to go out and buy lunch. No biggy, so I gave him a few dollars and he was a happy young man. I am sure he will milk this for all it is worth before the week is up but that is OK, I did say “if I choose to comply”.

So it is possible to be non-materialistic for someone’s birthday even a nineteen year old boy. There is no pressure to find just the right gift and everyone is happy.

ITEM 209 OF 365 LESS THINGS

This donation if off to it’s third owner. I got it second hand and now I am passing it on to someone else. It may have had more owners than that even, because who know how many hands it went through before it got to me.