The Clutter-Free Gift: An Experience

If someone wants to gift you something (birthday, holidays, etc.) a fantastic way to avoid adding clutter into your home is to mention how much you would love to receive an experience instead of a thing. It may feel slightly awkward putting it out there that you have a preference, but usually the gift giver wants to make you happy by giving you something you’ll actually enjoy.

The gift of an experience does four things: it eliminates you receiving a physical gift you may not need/want, it generally gives you something fun to look forward to, it allows you to be genuine in your thanks and it creates a memory you can look back on. It’s a burden to have to figure out how to discretely get rid of a gift you’ll never use or worse; keep it around for a bit to strategically use when the gift giver comes to your home. Think of the difference: “Oh, Grandma, wow, this fluorescent pink, green and yellow crocheted blanket is really interesting on our Gus Modern couch”…versus being able to say, “Oh, Grandma, thank you so much for the gift card to that new restaurant in town; we loved it and intend to go back!”

Here’s a somewhat extreme, but true example of gifting experiences: when my sister and I were about ten and seven years old, my folks looked around the day we celebrated Christmas and were pretty mortified by how much stuff “Santa” had (over) delivered from the North Pole. It struck them that most of it was not needed and wouldn’t even be remembered 1, 5, 10 years from then. That day they decided that it was time to approach the holiday differently: it was time to switch from gifting things to gifting experiences. Every year since that Christmas, my family has gone on a trip somewhere instead of doing major gifting. While we still received a few small gifts oriented towards the trip (for example, a new pair of sunglasses if we were going somewhere warm) we by and large, forwent physical gifts and I can personally tell you the result: I don’t remember the physical gifts. I remember the trips. I remember all the time we spent together and the fun things we did - and I wouldn’t trade it for a stock sweater from the Gap any day!