aibu to think that people should never give anything decorative for the house as a present?

[dalziel1]

unless you are certain that the other person explicitly will like it, and has space for it?

I especially include things like pictures, lamps, ornaments, curtains and anything else that will take up space, isn't a consumable and will be in the way be noticeable if the other person doesn't have it on display for years to come?

Smaller stuff, less obvious stuff like paperweights are ok, however.

I have a reputation amongst my family for being fussy - "pre donated to the charity shop" is a phrase my endearing, but useless at remembering birthday's, brother often trots out.

I have been given the odd thing that I still have and use but mostly such things get disposed off. I only give household stuff to people I know really well.

Although interestingly I have been known to buy tea-towels as gifts - after all they are useful, and if you don't like them, does it really matter? After reading this thread I may have to revise this trend.

Tea towels are a bit different though - you can easily stuff them in a drawer, they don't take up much room, and then you've got a spare if you have a sudden run on tea towels for whatever reason.

When I moved into my house I mentioned that I had a pond for the first time and there were frogs in it...along came one frog ornament followed by a biblical plague of the bastards until I had to say STOP!!! I think I am quite hard to buy for (fussy cow) so people seize on one thing! My MIL doesn't approve of my taste so is always giving me wildly floral curtains and bedding which strangely is never used! On the flip side I spent ages searching for a present for my dad and step mum. I found a lovely hand painted plate by a local artist which seemed to match their taste perfectly - they seemed to love it too. Popped round one day and thought I wonder where they put that plate? Found it on a high shelf with a dead houseplant in a plastic flowerpot on top of it all brown and ruined from water and dirt. I did feel a bit hurt but then thought oh well it's theirs to do what they like with. Never mentioned it as didn't want to embarrass them.

When my stepdads mum died and we were clearing out her house we found a cupboard full of literally hundreds of unused decorative tea towels. It seems everyone who visited anyone ever had bought her a tea towel and she had never used any of them. She has been dead 15 years, I think my mum is still using them.

My MIL bought me a large, bright green windchime.

I have, on two occasions, been given framed photos of a friend's child in a proper decorative 10" x 8" frame that I am obviously supposed to hang on the wall, and she even gave me one of those canvases with her DDs handprints on.
She's not even that close a friend - they are not on the wall (well, the frames are but I put my own kid's picture in them instead). She only comes round once a year and has never claimed to have noticed.
But my older b and SiL are the CHAMPIONS of this. They have two kids, 8 and 6, and one on the way. Every Christmas and birthday since the first one was born, my parents have received some kind of decorative item with their grand children's face all over it. They have mugs, pictures, at least 6 canvases, table mats, key rings, four snow shakers - they even have a canvas my niece painted when she was 2 - it's literally three splodges of non-identifiable colour and some sticker snowflake things.
Last Christmas it was a digital photo frame with 50 more photos of the little darlings loaded on to it.
My parents live in one of those park home things - they haven't got acres of wall space, but if it's not on the wall within days of being gifted they get asked if there's a problem with it, or if there's a reason they don't want to show off their grandchildren especially as "they are always growing so no two pictures are the same." Plus also, canvases and frameless frame things are quite modern looking, and they prefer traditional frames, so it all looks out of place.
My dad said they are peed off with it but "don't want to appear ungrateful, so they will eventually probably end up buying another house to display it in".
The snow shakers are his "favourite". He said about the last one: "I thought these were rubbish toys when I was little. Why the hell would I want four of them when I'm 72?"
I thought he had a point to be honest.

I know someone who was bought an ornament for each of her twins when they were born. The ornaments were part of a collectable range she hated but other visitors saw them on display and started buying them too. She ended up with the entire collection

Yanbu. My MIL is the worst. We moved in together quite young and she bought everything and I was too young to put my foot down. I hated it though. One Xmas I was unpacking decorations and realised there was not one thing there we had picked ourselves. That was the end. I threw it all out (unless we happened to like it- rare) and started again. She still does it but to a lesser extent after 10
Years of her stuff not being displayed. She has awful taste.