to not want to wrap everyone else's presents?

[joshandjamie]

Ok, I know very well that I am being unreasonable and I should instead just be grateful and shut up and stop being so miserable and should appreciate how lucky I am etc etc etc. But it annoys me nonetheless.

For the last few Christmases/birthdays when family/godparents have bought gifts for our kids they order them online and send them direct to me. They then send me an email saying: 'Hi, have sent gift. Please wrap for me and give to child.'

Yes I am very grateful that they are making the effort and spending their money on buying my children presents. But I have my own heap of Christmas presents I have to wrap. What's more, it feels really impersonal - like here's something I found on Amazon, it took me two minutes, happy Christmas. No note or card.

Yet when I send presents to their children, I order them, get them sent to me, wrap them and put a personal note on them and then pay more postage to post them on to them. Am rapidly thinking that I am the fool here and that I shall just do what they do. It will save on wrapping time, postage costs and general effort.

Bah humbug. I'll just give myself a

Just give it to them in the cardboard box. That's what I do.

But they could simply choose the giftwrap option from amazon surely? Thats what my step-father does when he sends gifts.

I'd be a bit peeved if wrapping lots of other presents too.

MrsCambell - you would think so. Most places have a gift wrap option. Perhaps they don't want to spend the extra money.

I do get a little peeved at this before I cop myself on. One family member always does it and a small part of me resents it. But in the grand scheme of things.....................

I can go one better than that I just get given money and then I have to go out and buy something as well and wrap etc.

Nikon - when that happens I present the money to the kids in an envelope and they get mega excited to buy something themselves. No way am I going to do anymore Christmas shopping than I have to.

You could always just ask them to send cash for you to hand straight over to the child. I've been doing this for years - or if I'm really feeling lazy, I just write a cheque - which I imagine is even more annoying and probably hangs around for ages.

My children seem to get masses of gift cards - my pet hate - especially the ones from whsmiths - why is this the store of choice for aunts? It was a great store in the 1970s - not any more - could have a whole thread on how much I hate those - always end up having to buy them back from my children who can't find anything they want in there - at least I am ready for restocking the pencil cases at the start of term.

All my family send money and I love it - I get to choose exactly what the kids want and have the fun of shopping too... wrapping is annoying, but no biggie.

I'd be grateful if my kids godparents remembered them and did an Amazon or ebay order... this year I ordered a couple of books for my sister and had them shipped direct and not wrapped to my Mum to wrap for her - it's way too expensive shipping from one country to another if it is something they can get cheaper over there.

Nikon, very much the situation here as well. Unfortunately its a case of you either do it or the kids will get money instead of a present. Doesn't have the same magic for a 5 and 6 yo.

They should get Amazon to wrap it.

My inlaws used to arrive late on Christmas eve and then say "have you got any wrapping paper and sellotape so we can wrap your presents?" - don't know what they'd have done if we'd run out!

Same as NIKON here too. Which I prefer to a gift card. Ds will be getting a ten pound game gift card from sinl. What can you buy from game for a tenner? You have to add money too it then end up spending a lot more on a game than necessary.

Also it's the out of pocket costs that get me as well. People don't think of chucking in a fiver for petrol and parking, or provide gift wrap.

Do what my DM does. Put them in a plastic bag, vaguely sellotape up the plastic bag, and then put a tatty old ribbon on the top. If she's feeling artistic, she'll try to find a nice coloured plastic bag.

I have gifts arrive this way, I cheat though and have a stock of the cheap Card Factory gift bags tucked away, I just pop the gift in one of those (if opened carefully I can re-use it again the next year).

If you're being unreasonable then so am I.
We're going to the ILs for New Year this year (as it's not their turn for Xmas) and I was expecting Xmas Part II complete with present exchange, just a mere week after the main event. I've bought all their presents and will be taking them down to exchange in person.
First off, a couple of wrapped presents arrived from Amazon for the DCs. Ok, lovely I thought, they obviously want them to have something on Xmas day to open from them (despite the fact that DS (almost 3) will no doubt be inundated, and DD is a baby who has no idea what is going on).
Since then, barely a day has gone by without some other unwrapped tat coming through our door. I fucking hate wrapping presents!
Think I'm going to wrap them all and transport them all the way across the country for NY anyway. That way they get to see the kiddie's faces when they open them and quite frankly I think it might be better to spread the excitement over a week anyway.
Humph!

The only time I grumbled about something similar (I'd like lots of horrified gasps to the following please) (first a bit of background) my husbands ex to whom he has 2 kids too one 18 lives with us, the other 16 lives with the witch. The witch ditched 18yo when she was 3 and moved to Scotland with 16yo (then 1) and raised her to believe she had no sister, tried to claim money off my DH for the one she had, didn't send birthday cards or Xmas cards or speak to her till she was 16. Long story short for the first Xmas she chose to be back in her life she sent a box of crap (she'd obviously spent about £20 in a pound shop) and left it for me to wrap. I'm talking a toothbrush with no packet, travel toothpaste, tiny stupid fiddly crap! I wrapped it because I'm the bigger person and it wasn't DSDs fault. I had a 6 week old baby and PND at the time it was not wrapped with any good will!!!

Everything I've bought I've had sent to me. I've then lovingly wrapped and had the kids do their bit of tat beautiful art work present and then its all packaged up in a big parcel and sent to the family concerned. I would never expect to have them wrap it. I guess if I was buying a bike or something I wouldn't do all that because it would be stupidly expensive but then I would pay for gift wrapping.

send theirs unwrapped then all you are doing is wrapping each others presents no one loses.

I agree, just give them in their boxes. It won't do them any harm!

I'm on the other side here (kind of) - YANBU if they are in the same country and sending it but postage can cost a fortune from overseas. I do the amazon thing for my nieces in the UK but I'm in New Zealand so even sending a tshirt squashed up in an envelope will still cost the equivalent of 10-15 pounds to post so rather than be limited to small, light presents, i go to amazon. Even though I pay for the gift wrap option, sticks in my throat a bit to have to spend 3 pounds for wrapping each present (especially converting that to NZ dollars), means i have to limit to 2 presents otherwise ends up costing heaps to get wrapped. My family (from the UK) do the same thing for my DC's and use NZ based websites - I'd much rather wrap the presents from them myself rather than them spend an over inflated amount on getting the website to do the wrapping.

YANBU OP.

How about you send your Amazon purchases straight to the person, and also post a little note at the time of ordering? You can ask the parent to wait for your note before wrapping. If they do the same, 2 sets of postal fees vs. 4. Job done!

YANBU to want them to take the time to wrap the gift themselves, lazy buggers! For goodness sake, Amazon do giftwrapping for an extra £2-£3! I've used that option quite a bit because DP or MIL sometimes get to the post before I do and I don't want them knowing what's in there!

DP thinks I'm mad though. I've got some OCD tendencies, suffered badly from it in the past but now it's died down, and I insisted upon wrapping the Amazon presents that had already come giftwrapped because otherwise they wouldn't match the rest of the presents! I even have a different roll of wrapping paper for each member of my family...

YABVVU for not enjoying wrapping presents though. I love it! I go all out with Christmas Ribbon and curls and stick-on stars and matching gift tags. I'm really really good at wrapping but if I do it wrong I'm prone to scrapping the already-used paper and starting it all again.

I will come and do it for you, OP.. there are TWO 'chores' that I dearly love to do. One is peeling potatoes, the other is wrapping presents...

If it is a chore though, it's not fun. YANBU. What about gift bags? They can just be sellotaped at the top.

I'll wrap them! I've finished all my wrapping and I love wrapping presents!

I wont lie, I'm not the best but hey, practice makes perfect!