I feel physically sick at how much grandparents spending on Christmas

I think the suggestions of them keeping stuff at their own house are the only way to go to make your parents realise the impact. Could you say you'll go round their house for your kids to open their presents from them? Then when you go home, tell your kids they can pick their best three presents each to take home and leave the rest.

Obviously game playing isn't great, so you could say to your parents you're going to ask your kids just to keep their top three, and you can rehearse this with your kids beforehand so they're hopefully not feeling too deprived on the day. It would be great for your parents to take this on board in advance, but if they don't, then leaving them with the consequences is maybe the only way to bring it home to them. The build up to Christmas, buying things and thinking about kids opening a mound of gifts is such fun, but the aftermath of piles of tat that breaks, isn't really liked, clutters everything and just wrecks the planet is awful and tawdry. You need to show them this bit, not just let them have the fun stuff.

You have to be super direct. I had to do this with my mum after I walked into her house in the run up to Christmas and saw a mountain of presents.

I was quite brutal, I had to be. I told her that under no circumstances was she giving all that to my children. If she turned up with it at Christmas, she would be turned away. She was allowed to select 1 present from the pile for each child and the rest had to be returned or donated.

There was a bit of upset, she didn’t speak to me for a couple of weeks. But come Christmas Day, she did as I asked and has every Christmas since.

Don't give me the Magic of Christmas crap when it comes to presents. This kind of present-giving comes with a heap of twisted good intentions.

Look at this undeniable physical evidence of how much I love you (so you owe me - and aren't you lucky that time, affection, respect and obedience is free)
Appreciate how much I've spent on you (and me a pensioner).
Admire the crazy bounty and sheer fun of Granny! (better than stressed out mum & dad, or other granny, would you say?)

Ugh. My DH and his family are low-key with presents to the point where we don't really buy anything for each other apart from chocs-and-fizz-type gifts. Younger people get one or two presents from their Amazon wishlists or Things To Get Me lists.

And it's such a relief!! Peace reigns at Christmas and birthdays, nobody's nose is out of joint, and the gift is what a gift was always meant to be - a token of affection that enhances a normal gathering, but isn't the whole blaring, desperate, multicoloured plastic mountain story.

Talk to her and ask that half of the budget is used for membership for a fav animal park, softly etc and the rest is used on toys (give a list) pjs, books etc

This post reminded me of when I suggested something similar to my mum , and was met with a face like a smacked arse.

Grandparents want to be praised for their generosity and be adored by their grandkids for the shiny tat that has been bestowed on them, and for everyone to tell them how marvellous they are. How do you get that with an anonymous donation?

Birthdays and Christmas are always full of grandparent main character syndrome when it comes to the kids. It can be chaos with two competing sets of grandparents trying to shove presents under the kids noses. Chuck in a 'fun' auntie/uncle who things their present is cool or unique, and it becomes uncontrollable.

What a shame and how wasteful! I think toys are really quite cheap these days, but days out are pricey. Imagine if they gave you half the budget - £250 for experiences would be at least two days out somewhere special.

I agree that the GP just want to experience the thrill of seeing the kids happy, rather than what's best for them in the long term. They probably do enjoy the shopping too, in a way that's more exciting than buying a voucher or handing over cash.

You can only be direct with them. If they don't want to give vouchers/money, at the very least can they hold back and wait and see what the dc need later in the year and contribute to that? My dc have January birthdays so we used to give less and then see what they needed at Easter, eg a bike or scooter.

Sounds like toys that live at grandma’s house!

This was exactly the same as my parents. They say they got great joy out of seeing the children open ALL the presents. I told them it was excessive but it fell on deaf ears, they told me they enjoyed spending on the kids and it was their money to spend his they liked. They never even used to buy clothes out anything useful as "kids don't want/ appreciate clothes, all they want is toys" 🙄

Who on Earth are you talking about?

Why are you so insistent that expectations of inheritance are central to relationships?

Very generous of them. Any chance you could redirect to an annual pass to a nearby attraction instead or put some of it in savings/ as spending money? A family annual pass for a local petting farm was our favourite present ever.

At the least you will be able to buy an experience instead of toys as you’ll know they’ll be well catered for things to open on the day!

I share the kids xmas list with both set of grandparents and am very happy for them to buy the items I think will be their favourites and for us to cover the less exciting things they actually need.

Just say no. This happened with my sister years ago, before I had DS and at the time I thought that if mum and dad wanted to spend stupid amounts on the grandchildren, so be it - grandparents perogative. It took a while before I realised that it is very much a parent problem - not just because of the impact of a ton of plastic and children being overwhelmed but also because they just didn't want their children to be spoiled by getting tons of gifts, even before they (the parents) had bought them anything. After that we started to limit gifts to £20 outside of the immediate family. If you wanted to get a bigger gift it meant combining with another family member.

Like when people post photos of a mountain of wrapped presents on FB on Xmas Eve? FML!

That's way too much. Your house will be full up with stuff.
She needs to half it and give half of that in money.

If they do insist on giving too many toys can you swiftly put some aside, unused, and ebay or NCT sale them? The kids can have that cash. I had to do that a few times when we were swamped.

I think I would either arrange things so that the presents are opened in the grandparent house and leave them all there. Or I would drop it all off later and insist that they stay there because I don't have room for them.
They will only stop doing it if it causes them a problem.

Omg this was my mum too when I suggested donating. "Why on earth would I gift to complete strangers?!?!"
Basically, I want DC to see how generous we are, ergo, how much we love them.

The other issue is that it then raises the bar in terms of what you get for them (the GPs). When they've spent £500 on the kids, it would seem inappropriate and ungrateful to gift a bottle of wine and a box of Roses!

Why didn’t she spend day £50 and put the rest into savings for them?

My daughter's mother-in-law does this and it has a knock-on effect for all of us the rest of the family only ever give one gift because everyone is so overwhelmed. The children come to hate opening presents and my DD and her husband end up drowning in stuff with bags of inappropriate clothes and every piece of anything an interest is expressed in bought in one go. We now give gift before the bday to keep at ours (we are regular childcare so they have their own room here). Recently I found my daughter's old skipper complete with a pushchair and all bits and ddgs (2) has loved it. Other grandmother bought every single available Skipper toy cars, campervan, scooters everything must of cost so much money for her bday and is now asking for Xmas ideas. Meanwhile dgd is still playing with the 1980s Skipper that was her mothers. They are exactly the same with their own daughters daughters they can easily afford it but it's so wasteful and overwhelming. And the clothes are always bought big so end up seasonally inappropriate and my DD would never get to choose her own childrens clothes if she used them all. She gives loads to charity or passes it quietly on. Their son and own DD have tried to stop it but it seems to be a family thing and huge sacks of presents arrive from their surviving grandma and them every birthday and every Christmas with the poor kids expected to sit for an hour or two opening endless gifts while the whole family sits and watches. Honestly it's grim on her last birthday dgd2 burst into tears and hid her face in my husband's chest and he put a complete stop to it. The 5 year old has also started refusing saying no I don't want anything else I want to play with this or even I'm not wearing that please take it back 🙈

Without the labels/packaging (how sad of them) - I bet there are still kids' charities, hospitals and toy libraries that will happily take them.

If you gave my ex and his wife a list they'd buy every single item on it

If she's not already got them all try and stop her in her tracks.
Tell her the bigger things they want. Try get an agreement to get those or contribute to those. Say you think its going to be more special to do some things together instead: see if you can persuade her to take them to see santa or a winter wonderland or go carol singing or something. Say they prefer that to presents.
If all else fails have a giant party to give them all away.

My mum was like this, it drove me bonkers. I never asked her not to do it, but I always wished she wouldn’t.

She died last year though and I can’t tell you how much I’d give for my kids to have a dozen cheap prezzies from her now, Christmas last year felt so much smaller without her OTT number of cheap gifts for the kids. And in hindsight, I’m glad the kids had those years of feeling spoilt by her, because they know it came from a place of love.

Yes, love isn’t only shown through quantity, and I was a big advocate for quality over quantity, but actually that was how she showed love and I’m glad she got to see their excited faces opening loads of gifts, and I’m glad they got to experience it while they could.

PIL are like this and very much quantity over quality in a way that is very negative for our SEND children. For a while they were happy to buy family passes to places.

OP I think you need to be very very direct and just tell your mum no.

What's the worst that could happen really?!

Make a list of suggestions instead....
Money in an isa for them when they're older.
One really good quality toy. Quality not quantity.
A season pass to somewhere local that they can take them or you can - presence not presents.
Tickets to a kids theatre show.
Cinema tickets.
Something practical like a new scooter each.
A garden toy (if you've a garden, or they do).
Suggest some presents are "usable" items they can unwrap like baking kits, paint, playdoh, bubbles, etc. Presents they will have fun with, but that wont stick around forever. Maybe they could even be activities they could do with grandma, at her house!

Don't be vague OP. Tell her NOW, while it's still October that you don't want a house FULL of toys.

I’d rather them spend £250 on new clothes and shoes in the next size up or a bike or something along those lines. I find the b&m 2 for £20 to be pure tat and crap that just takes up room. My partners aunt always gets the kids stuff from there and they never touch it.