I'm very fussy and picky about what I have on display in my home. I'm a minimalist and what few ornaments and pictures or other things on the wall are very carefully chosen, tasteful, pleasing to my eyes and they match the style I have created. All my crockery is a matching set and my kitchen cupboards have no space left for assorted, non matching bits.
The problem is, kind-hearted, well-meaning people keep buying me nasty, cheap-looking tawdry tat, like badly-painted resin representations of robins or hippos, cheap looking tat wall hangings, hanging signs with unamusing writings on them, and ugly pottery mugs or jugs, cow-shaped milk jugs.
My own family and friends were bad enough, but now I have a Latvian flatmate who has zero aesthetic sense of what is tasteful and what is tawdry. I have told her -gently, kindly, and with an appealing smile - that I have enough art and crafts in the house and there really isn't room for more, but she will not desist. Her mum and sister come to stay twice a year and to say "thank you" they are bringing me nasty, tawdry looking plastic or resin "souvenirs from Riga" - ornaments, stuffed toys, badly painted pictures, and fridge magnets.
I hate fridge magnets and would not have one. However, once about ten people had bought me one and stuck it on my fridge, everyone now thinks I collect them and buy them specially, and there are now about 100. It's a job to find the blooming handle!
Every now and again, when I am cleaning, and feeling guilty AF, I slip the most tawdry ornament into the bin, pushing it well down underneath the kitchen waste so she won't see it. In this way, I am getting gradually rid of them. But sometimes my flatmate asks where an item is and I have to tie myself in knots apologising for accidentally knocking it over and smashing it :-( Sometimes she has replied, not to worry, I will get my mum to bring you a new one! Aagghhh!
My DB and DSIL bought me the most disgusting piece of tasteless tat: it was a huge, heavy, badly-painted resin bundle of birds ornament, complete with a tacky water feature, which played a jingle and spouted water whenever you clap your hands. I had to remember to get that out, every time they visited, for 3 years until one day I pretended that my butterfingers cleaner had smashed it.
I cannot be the only one who has faced this. How do you handle it without hurting people's feelings? How do you stop them from buying stuff, and if they take you by surprise, or still bring stuff, how do you get out of having to put it on your mantelpiece or wall?