Do you have unwanted gifts stored away in cabinets, closets, bookshelves, under the bed, anywhere you can hide them? Do they make you feel guilty and burdened every time you see them? You deserve to be able to happily look anywhere in your home! And you can, if you follow this approach:
Start by accepting unwanted gifts gratefully, but without going too over the top on the appreciation (you don’t want to get something similar again!). I usually send a heartfelt thank you by text, email or post, and for an extra nice touch I’ll add a photo of me with the gift.
Then plan your exit strategy. We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but as minimalist Francine Jay believes, “for most people, the act of giving is what’s important, and they don’t give a second thought to the object after it changes hands.” This is so true! Much of the time, they won’t even remember what they gave you.
- If they’ve included a gift receipt they weren’t sure you’d like it, so don’t feel guilty exchanging it for something you love.
- If there is no gift receipt, I often drop unwanted gifts at my local Goodwill, where someone else can discover it as the thing they’ve always wanted, and Goodwill makes some money too.
- There is also the option of re-gifting, which most of us cringe just thinking about. My rule of thumb is: it’s okay to re-gift something if I immediately think of someone who would love the gift so much that I would have bought it for them myself. I’ll put a post-it on the present with the name of the person I want to give it to written in large letters and who gave it to me and when. This helps to ensure that the person who gave it to me won’t find out and be hurt (I also avoid re-gifting to anyone in the same group of friends). I then store it in the same place that I keep my wrapping paper, ribbons and cards so I don’t forget about it. Sometimes I’ll save it for a specific occasion like a birthday or Christmas, but often I’ll just explain the situation and give it to the person the next time I see them as a surprise, which never fails to make their day!
If you have unwanted gifts in your home, now is the time to get rid of them and their associated negative feelings. If you can’t do it on your own, get a professional organizer for moral support. Often someone just asking you the right questions about an item can make you feel ready to let it go (particularly for family heirlooms!). The good news is that you should only have to do this once, as after you can maintain your new zen state by following the strategies in the blog post: “How to take control of gifting.”
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