Whether you like it or not, the holiday season is upon us!
I am thrilled, because I absolutely love Christmas and this time of year in general. It’s going to be Little Miss’s second Christmas, but it really does feel like her first because last year she was too young to appreciate any of the fun festivities that surround the holidays.
I’m so looking forward to taking her to see Christmas light displays, the beautiful Christmas tree that is set to music at a mall near us, and of course – seeing her reaction to gifts from Santa on Christmas morning!
While I am all about simplifying and trying to be as much of a minimalist parent as I can be, I still believe in Santa visiting my children on Christmas morning. I am so excited to re-live some holiday magic through her that only a child can truly experience!
That being said, I am definitely trying to limit the overall amount of gifts she is getting and am aiming for as many clutter-free gifts as possible to be entering our home. We are also focusing a lot on making sure the gifts she’s receiving present learning opportunities for her so they aren’t just toys that require a million batteries that don’t facilitate imagination or creative play.
While coming up with our idea list for what Little Miss is going to be receiving on Christmas morning, I had several clutter-free gift ideas for all ages come to mind and thought it would be fun to share them with you all in case you are looking for clutter-free gift inspiration for those on your Christmas shopping list. This list can be applied to any occasion though, so feel free to refer back to it for all gift-giving opportunities throughout the year! 🙂
The Ultimate Clutter-Free Gift Guide:
For Women
- The gift of slowing down and finding joy this holiday season by participating in the Savor the Holidays Mini Course
- Bath bombs or bubble bath for an indulgent bath experience
- A soy candle
- Travel size of her favorite perfume
- Spa gift card for a massage or other treatment
- An Amazon Prime membership – this has been a life saver for me since becoming a Mom and is a great gift for pretty much anyone in your life. It includes free 2-day shipping, unlimited access to over a million songs, instant streaming with Prime Video, free unlimited photo storage, and free books through the kindle owners’ lending library.
- A gift card to Starbucks so she can enjoy her favorite latte as a treat from you!
For Men
- The gift of slowing down and finding joy this holiday season by participating in the Savor the Holidays Mini Course
- For the cigar aficionado – a favorite cigar or two to enjoy
- Amazon Fire TV Stick – my hubby recently purchased one for us and he seriously loves it. It’s an easy way to enjoy over 250,000 TV episodes and movies on Netflix, Amazon Video, HBO GO, and Hulu, plus games, music, and more.
- Gourmet snacks – beef jerky, nuts, or other nicer quality snack goodies
- Microbrew beers that they wouldn’t normally purchase for themselves
- For the bearded gentleman – some beard oil or conditioner
- Gift cards for iTunes or Amazon so they can choose anything they would like
For Babies
- Organic puff snacks
- Mesh fresh food feeder – perfect for putting in frozen or fresh fruit to make “popsicles” for teething
- Board books – this You Are My Cupcake book was a favorite in our house and still is. It is super cute and has lots of fun colors and textures for babies to feel.
- Clothes – babies are usually just happy to be able to play with wrapping paper and don’t really care much about what’s actually inside the wrappings. This is your chance to gift them some necessities you likely would have purchased anyway. This cozy little sherpa hat would be a nice choice for both boys and girls.
For Toddlers
- Fun foaming hand soap
- Stickers – these cat & dog stickers are adorable if your toddler loves animals!
- Wooden alphabet magnets – Little Miss is getting these and we plan to use them on the back of cookie sheets. Fun for her, and a great learning opportunity to teach her the alphabet!
- Holiday themed board books – The Itsy Bitsy Snowman looks like a cute read for little ones
- Table & chairs set just their size – I’m eyeing something like this table & chairs set for Little Miss. She is really into furniture that’s her size and I know she would love coloring and eating snacks at a table just for her!
- A family membership to a local museum or zoo – my brother gave us a family membership to our local children’s museum for Christmas last year and it’s something we have really enjoyed!
For Children
- Art supplies like stickers, crayons, scented markers, or some red glitter glue.
- A day of fun where they get to choose all of the activities for the day (perhaps things you wouldn’t normally do like laser tagging, mini golf, cosmic bowling, etc.). Be sure to check Groupon to see if they offer any deals on those activities.
- Holiday themed books – This Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer pop-up book is fun for Christmas
- Bath time fun – these bath finger paints look like a blast!
- Classes for something they want to learn – things like dance classes, gymnastics, or swimming lessons
For Teenagers
- Nail polish or other beauty treatments to create their own home spa
- A cute note cube to help stay organized
- Tickets to see their favorite band in concert (or make your own voucher if you can’t purchase tickets for it quite yet)
- Cozy and fun socks
- iTunes gift card to add some new songs to their collection
- Scented lotion or shower gel that is a little nicer than they would purchase for themselves
- Movie theater gift card or restaurant gift card to treat themselves to a fun night out on your dime
Savor the Holidays Mini Course
If you’re looking for ways to simplify Christmas this year and savor the holiday season, be sure to check out my Savor the Holidays course! It’s a 21 day mini course that will help you slow down and soak up all the joy this holiday season has to offer, and makes a great clutter-free gift for friends or family too ? I would love to have you join us! Click here to learn more.
What are your favorite clutter-free gift ideas? Are you getting as excited for the holidays as I am?
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We love to give gourmet snacks – like dark chocolates, or fancy coffee beans, or fancy pasta… all those things you would never indulge in for yourself. For the babies and toddlers in my family, we request money for college savings… and one of the biggest hits is a gift card to Toy-R-Us or Target because the kids love the idea of getting to ‘shop’ for anything they want!
Those are actually some of my favorites too Mrs. SSC! Gourmet coffee beans are definitely up there on my list of all-time favorite gifts to receive 🙂
This is a great list of clutter-free gift ideas. I’m also aiming to give clutter-free gift ideas by giving experience based gifts. As much as the things are appreciated, I feel like experiences are much more memorable. So I’ve been scouring Groupon and Living Social for fun and different experience ideas for the holiday season.
Thanks Terri! Absolutely, experience gifts are awesome!
Great list! Art supplies are my favorite clutter-free gift for my own kiddos!
Agreed Kara! Little Miss is just starting to be more into arts & crafts, but I can tell she’s already a huge fan!
Love those ideas 🙂 My 5 year old always loves stickers and also balloons. These are always must in our family and very affordable as well 🙂
Stickers have been a huge hit in our house the past few months too, the babe is getting several sheets of them in her stocking. heh!
Great ideas! I’m keeping my son’s gift list small this year to cut back on unnecessary clutter. We may look into getting an Amazon Fire TV Stick because we have Prime but it doesn’t cast on Chromecast and our current device seems to be going out.
The Fire Stick is seriously awesome Chonce! We’ve been watching a ton of movies on it lately 🙂
Love this list 🙂 Also, I’m a sucker for little kids furniture – so cute!
Agreed! I told myself I wouldn’t “clutter” our house up with it, but after realizing how much delight she gets from sitting in furniture her size, I caved. We splurged and got her an everywhere chair from Pottery Barn Kids for her birthday and it has been one of the best investments – she loves sitting in it and reading her books! 🙂 Now I really would love for her to have a table her size to sit at and eat snacks like a big girl and work on her coloring. I know she’d get so much use out of it!
YES! I love this list– especially the Amazon Prime idea. I also think that we put a lot of pressure behind giving people stuff that’s useful. I like to give things that have meaning: a good story, a good cause, or maybe a good memory attached to it. Then our gift becomes worth more than the dollar amount we paid!
Great ideas Daisy, thanks for sharing!! 🙂
Gift cards are definitely great. Especially movie or food ones because then you don’t even bring clutter back after spending them!
I like the idea of mainly using consumables. Experiences are also great too.
Agreed Abigail! Consumables and experiences are at the top of my list too 🙂
My BIL gets lots of requests from charitable organizations at this time of year. He collects all of them then on Christmas Day the family sits down and each one chooses which donation he/she would like made in his/her name. So they get the activity of reviewing and choosing as well as the sense of having done something good for others without adding to the clutter of the world. I love it!
I also love giving gifts from fair trade sources.
That’s such an awesome idea that your BIL implements Linda! I really love that, thank you for sharing!