Ten Tips to Manage Christmas Present Overwhelm

People love to buy things for children. Even the most unlikely adults get all misty-eyed when thinking about their favourite childhood toys and want to shower that nostalgic magic upon all the little ones in the vicinity.

However, for parents this generous impulse can become a burden rather than a delight. If perhaps half a dozen adults buy a child something for their birthday and something for Christmas, that’s a dozen toys per year… per child… forever. And close your mind now to the thought of all-class-invited birthday parties. Even the most thoughtful, appropriate, useful and beloved gift is going to be unwelcome if it adds to the endless problem of storage and tidying – no matter how much fun it might be to actually play with.

This may sound cynical and ungrateful, but it’s intended to keep the joy in giving and receiving. If it’s the thought that counts for the giver, the same is true of the receiver and you can treasure the thought and intention while simultaneously donating the actual object. If you can be prepared with strategies for limiting the number of toys received, making sure they are things you are happy to have in your house, and dealing swiftly with anything that doesn’t make the cut, you’ll have a much happier time after all the wrapping paper has been recycled and the guests have gone home. After all, they don’t have to live in your home – you do, all year round!

1. Keep a list throughout the year

People will ask you what to get, and you really don’t want to be floundering! This will help direct people’s generous impulses into well-considered presents that are appropriate for your child’s age and preferences – and yours. You can use this to note down things which might be useful, things your child is interested in, and things which you personally don’t find objectionable. For example, our toddler likes to drag things around after him and has a very definite favourite animal, so I am asking my parents to buy him a pull-along animal toy for Christmas. I have also in the past asked for books about particular topics that I think he’d like.

2. Let people know that books and clothes are always welcome

You will always need clothes and they grow out of them so they’re not around forever if you find them hideous. Do bear in mind that people will buy for the current season in the size that says your child’s current age, so let them know if they’re particularly big or small. Books don’t take up much space, they’re easy to donate if you end up not liking them, and we’ve discovered some that we really love through presents.

3. Start a toy rotation

Google it, but basically you don’t keep all the toys out at once. You have a backup storage area and an “out” area and swap things between them so it feels fresh and new for your child (and you!)

4. Immediately put some toys and books away for later

Whenever you experience an avalanche of stuff at a major present-giving occasion, choose 1-3 to keep out and play with that day and put the rest away in your backup storage to bring out over the next few days, weeks or months. I intend to do this as long as I can get away with it. It prolongs the fun, lets your child focus on the few new items they have, and means you don’t have to find space for a thousand new things at once.

5. Have a finite amount of space for toys that are “out”

We have a set of shelves upstairs in his bedroom and a trunk downstairs in the sitting room. If it can’t fit in either of those, it goes away into the backup cupboard (or we get rid of it completely). This makes tidying up not only easier but actually possible, because there is space for everything, and provides a natural limit on the volume of ‘stuff’ without being too dictatorial about what is and isn’t “out”. In time we’ll be asking our son to decide for himself, but there’s a clear limit set by us.

6. Return or exchange anything you don’t want

You don’t have to come up with some big Reason why you don’t want it. Maybe it’s similar to some other stuff you already have, maybe you personally think it’s hideous, maybe it makes the most ear-splitting noises… It’s your house, you decide. I have found shops to be very accommodating about exchanging toys which are obviously unopened in their original packaging, even without a receipt, as long as you are polite. Only once have they not been able to find something on their system so wouldn’t take it back, and I just shrugged and took it home again. If you’re not sure where something has come from, try Googling it. I usually try to exchange for clothes, but one time I actually ended up exchanging a toy from Boots for £20 worth of baby wipes. I got a few… looks from the cashier, but I had something actually useful instead of a dancing snail that played over fifty tinny little songs. #noshame If you are worried people will ask where something is, blame toy rotation for it being out of sight.

7. Keep one light-up, all-singing, all-dancing toy with batteries

We have a “no batteries” rule in our house. He can have the toy, but with an empty battery compartment. This has kept our blood pressure at reasonable levels as we don’t have to listen to any dreadful music except him bashing away at the out-of-tune xylophone I bought in error. However, we do have one that we call “Satan’s Own Toy” which does everything. Music. Animal noises. Lights. Movement. It’s just awful. And he loves it. So we keep it in our backup cupboard 99% of the time, when when we’re having a really rough time of it (we’re ill, he’s teething, whatever) we get it out and lie on the sofa while he dances to its skin-crawling monophonic music. Then it goes away again until next time. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so this also increases its power as I’m sure he’d get bored of it if he had it all the time.

8. Toys can live at other people’s houses

If people whom you see regularly give you too many or too horrendous toys, exclaim with delight about how great it will be for your child to have XYZ to play with when you go round to their house. This works especially well with grandparents. My parents have my ye olde Brio train set at their house (which, dangit, I wish we had at ours…) and our son is ecstatic to see it every time. They also have some books they have bought that I find tedious or downright bizarre – because they need books to read to him at their house, right?!

9. Show great delight if anyone ever gives you anything second-hand

This is pretty self-explanatory. The world doesn’t need more toys, but I think often people feel like second-hand things aren’t appropriate as presents. Not so! And let people know it!

10. Don’t buy your own child presents

Seriously, there is no need for you to spend your own money adding to the problem. If you can offer well-curated suggestions and/or encourage the giving of clothes and books, your child will receive plenty of stuff without you getting in on it. Do this for absolutely as long as you can get away with it. Literally years. Until they start actually asking. It is fun to buy them things sometimes – but save this impulse for the long stretch of year between birthdays and Christmases when you’ve got out all the backup presents, they’ve grown out of half their things anyway, and you all desperately want something new. That’s the time for you to spend your hard-earned money on something new, at a time when no one else will be.