No Buy Day

The 29^th November is Buy Nothing Day. A day set aside to combat the rampant commercialisation of the Holiday season. It is the same day as Black Friday in the States, their biggest buying day. We don’t have anything like this here but I thought it would be cool to take part even though most of my days are buy nothing days these days :)

Black Friday craziness

Since it is close to the holidays I decided that not only would I not buy anything I would also take the time to think about the gifts I will be giving at Christmas.

Firstly I summed up who I thought should be on my gift list. This list is actually pretty short since most of my family is in Europe and we work on a gift exchange system there (like a secret Santa, which is great as you only have to buy one gift then). Since I will not be joining them this year I have been excluded from the gift exchange.

So on my list; My sister, my parents, my husband. Usually DH is at a bit of a loss for gift ideas so I often include his parents, two brothers and one sister on my list.

Non-commercial gift ideas (and by that I mean DIY gifts or entertainment stuff);

1.       Tickets to movies, plays or music shows

2.       Memberships or subscriptions. Ie My sister bought us a year’s supply of organic vegetables for our wedding. We receive one packet every other week containing a random selection of fruit and vegetables that are in season. I thought this was fantastic!

3.       Lessons, ie last year DH paid for me to go to an Art course. If you know that someone has a particular interest you can support them in their pursuit of it.

These first three items are especially well suited when your recipients are living far away as they can easily be organized online.

4.       Food or drink, as consumable items these are always great gifts. Buying someone some posh chocolate or a fancy bottle of wine is always appreciated (just try and check beforehand to be sure they are not on a strange diet or have any food allergies). Bonus for anything you made yourself (provided it’s edible of course)

5.       DIY items – these can be great but approach with care. Not everyone will appreciate cork board coasters and since you went through the effort of making it yourself they might feel obliged to hold on to said items. Do you have any skills instead? Maybe your friend has always admired your art so you feel pretty confident to paint her something. Or maybe you’re good at IT and your friend needs some help with their blog layout. Can you garden? How about volunteering to help plant a mini garden or small section of someone’s yard. Everyone has some talent that can be utilised in some way. My contribution is usually fixing light fittings, helping design logos/cards, painting or just plain old assembling IKEA furniture (somehow everyone in my family seems to think they need an engineer to assemble anything from IKEA or maybe it’s just a clever ruse to get me to do the work).

So those are the lines I’ll be thinking along.