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Clutter Video Tip: 7 Ways to Simplify Holiday Gift Giving

Black Friday ads and holiday shopping can make you feel like you just stepped off of the Tilt-A-Whirl. Picking the perfect Christmas presents to give to everyone on your list can also be an emotional and financial roller coaster. In today’s video, I am sharing a simplified gift guide that will help ease your holiday overwhelm. Gift giving should not feel like a ride in the bumper cars.

(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/TCDGiving.)

Transcript:

Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today we’re going to talk about seven ways to simplify your gift giving at the holidays.

The first strategy is to draw names. So if you have a big family, it can be overwhelming to try to buy gifts for everybody. That’s mainly what we’re going to talk about today. So, drawing names is one of the first strategies, just everybody is responsible for one gift, really great. And the next strategy is to talk about spending limits, which you can do in combination with drawing names or just all by itself. But just saying, you know, everybody buy gifts, but nobody spend over $10, $15, whatever that is for you.

The third strategy is to buy gifts for the kids only. So maybe you’ve got lots of brothers and sisters and so, there’s all these aunts and uncles, and nieces and nephews. So if you focus on buying just for the nieces and nephews and forget about buying gifts for the couples and the aunts and uncles, it’s much simpler and kids are much easier to buy for.

Another strategy is to pitch in together for one large gift for someone special. So one of the things my husband’s family has done – they have a family of six children – all of the adult siblings pitched in to buy their parents a dining table set one year. And that was so satisfying, everybody felt great about this nice thing they were able to buy for their parents, and nobody had to worry about gifts for everybody else.

The fifth strategy is to have no gifts at all. So maybe you can all agree that you’re going to go on a trip together. Maybe you even go on a cruise or something where everyone can relax. Or you all do a service project together as a family. This can be a very satisfying way to give back during the holidays.

And the sixth strategy is to agree that you’re all going to give gifts, but they will be small or homemade. So like making something. This is the honey from my backyard beehives. You can make your own special jelly, or apple butter, or some kind of loaf of bread or candy, and have those homemade gifts be in place of something purchased.

And finally, the last and seventh strategy is to give low-clutter-calorie gifts. What I mean by this is something that does not have to take up space in your home. So you can give, of course, gift cards. Everybody knows that. But you can also give a class, like a cooking class that you can take together, or you can give a membership to a museum, or make a donation in someone’s name. You can have experiences together instead of having more stuff.

If you like all of this information, we have so much for you every day on our Twitter feed and on our Facebook page. You can see the links here on the screen. We would love to see you and interact with you there. So check us out at http://www.twitter.com/clutterdiet  and http://www.facebook.com/clutterdiet (Update August, 2016: New Social Media Links are https://twitter.com/loriemarrero and www.LorieFacebook.com).

See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

You may have been searching for how to give Christmas gifts in a big family or money saving tips for the holidays.

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