Even “unappreciated” homemade gifts can be used effectively – photo by arolenrock
How often do you receive a gift that you don’t want, can’t use or just plain don’t like? It happens. There are things you can do besides regift it at the first opportunity (although regifting is a great recycling tool as well!)
Useless and unwanted gifts include scarves, wallets, music or movies you don’t care for, and the list goes on. You probably have one particular gift you’ve received that stands out in your mind and is probably sitting on a shelf in your house somewhere. How can you turn these into useful items?
Sell Your Useless Gifts!
Let’s say you receive a pile of beautiful homemade, handcrafted crocheted pieces, lace and cloth but you are more interested in a bare-boned decorating style and really can’t use them. What can you do with them? A solution I have used is to take them to a nice consignment store. I invested the money I received for them, and believe me, they sold quickly, in a stainless steel cooking pot I’d been dreaming of owning. Consignment shops, flea markets, handmade crafts outlets are among the many possible ways to “unload” a nice item for cash.
Of course, most gifts may not be so valuable, but they can be used to get you closer to your “as prepped as possible” goal, whatever that ideal goal is. Remember – one man’s trash is another man’s treasure! Don’t hesitate to list those items on Craigslist or eBay, or even have a garage sale every once in a while, you might be surprised at how much all your unwanted junk is worth!
Trading Unwanted Gifts with Friends
An unwanted gift might be the perfect thing for someone you know. Consider a “gift party” where you and your friends get together for lunch to check out and maybe exchange them one for another. This way you might get something you actually want or a more suitable item you can gift to someone else so that you won’t have the worry of “did this person give me this gift originally….” All these new gifting items you get through the gift party means you will have items conveniently on hand when you suddenly need to get a gift together for someone. It’s a win – win situation.
Transform Useless Gifts into Useful Items
One of the good things about having a prepper mindset is you prepare for any eventuality. Flexibility is the name of the game. Get a cute little decorative item for Christmas? The prepper mindset means you automatically survey the item for any possible practical uses and if none is found… well, you know. Items with practical usefulness are of paramount importance; useless dust catchers, not so much. Luckily, that same prepper mindset means we can make something useful out of just about anything. For example, once I received a colored sand design in a canning jar which I immediately dumped out the sand, washed it and added it to my canning supplies. Many decorative items have practical uses.
There are other options besides regifting unwanted gifts – Photo by Jonas N
Nothing’s Useless to a Prepper!
These ideas for unwanted gifts can be added to the straight-out regifting plan of action to better equip your home with things you really desire, want and can use. Don’t just stuff those undesirable gifts back in the closet because you don’t know what to do with them. Call your friends, find that busy consignment shop, have a yard sale or just donate the whole bunch of nondesirable gifts to a charity for a tax deduction instead of letting them clutter up your home. Just because a gift is useless to you doesn’t mean it is useless. A good prepper can use anything to her advantage!
How have you used a useless gift?
I always try to find someone who wants it but if nothing else, I donate it with other things and use it as a tax write off. I despise a ton of knick-knacks so I try my best to be conscious of that when I am buying gifts.