Presents that are more hassle than fun

[Bex5490]

Now before everyone jumps at me for how grateful I should be to anyone who buys my child gifts…I know this. I always send the thank you videos of DS gleefully opening said gifts and I’m more than grateful for the love and sentiment behind them. However…

Today I spent my one day off work trying to simplify a science experiment made for an 8 year olds for my 4 year old son! There is now rainbow food colouring on my carpets and a grumpy DS who is sulking because he wasn’t allowed to rub the chemicals on his face 😂

Over the years I’ve had a professional painting kit, a huge blackboard easel meant for a classroom and a second hand trampoline with no garden!

What were your (if any) most inconvenient gifts?

Any experience voucher. Too many restrictions, have to find a time that works. A nice idea, but we’ve had at least a dozen and never redeemed one.

Bloody scalectrix (sp)

Bubble bath/ bath bombs/ bath salts.
I only have a walk in shower.
( The person gifting knew this).

Any kind of craft kit, science kit, fill in the rest of this book BS, customise your own doodah, or anything with more than ~4 components, even worse of the components are small. 'Hey, I thought you should spend your time doing this / tidying up / looking for missing bits!'

No also to flowers, plants and seeds (the gift of extra work), and any house or garden thing that will need to be on display. I hate the imposition and assumption of my taste that is usually very wrong. No art works, framed pictures etc, I don't want your choices on my walls. Please let me choose my own cushions.

Nothing too big that needs storing, worse if it's noisy like a massive floor piano. Not keen on hampers either, there's always some bits you'll never get to, but they're better than most presents and there's always the food bank to pass them on to.

I know I sound grumpy but quite frankly I wish gift giving would just become socially unacceptable. Most gifts are a total waste of time and money, and terrible for the environment, and I include the things I feel obliged to buy for others in that. They just won't listen when I ask for it to stop or change.

Gifts = obligation = stress

Oh no you have to like every present or you're super ungrateful 🙄

My mother was the Queen of shitty gifts

If it was fiddly,would cost you money or you couldn't use,she'd be all over it

The best one was a game that seemed to be modelled on 'mouse trap'

But you had to melt all these powders anf jellies to pour into a mould,leave to set while building the game

The moulds refused to set and the game wouldn't stay up-it kept collapsing

Cue 3 tearful kids-me the worst mummy in the world because I couldn't 'make' it work and all 3 grassed me up to (narc) nanna

She was put back in her box when I handed the whole lot over,told her it was almost built and we had lots of the powder and jellies left over so if she was that bothered,she could fucking do it for them

Oddly,it disappeared and we never saw it again

Massage vouchers. A massage is very high on my list of ‘things I would rather give birth again than go through’, and the vouchers couldn’t be given away as they were fancy gift ones with my name on them.

I hate it when guests bring flowers. It's enough that I'm running round getting people drinks, cooking dinner, making small talk without the faff of sorting them out. I'm always very appreciative on the surface bit I'm pissed off inside.

One year my mum bought me 300 flower bulbs. I only have a small garden and the previous year I had paid a gardener to plant as many bulbs as it had room for. The gifted bulbs ended up in the compost bin.

I think you can quite reasonably refuse to take unexpected pets.

My mum never forgave my granny for the year she bought me a giant box of brightly coloured 'craft' feathers. I'm not sure how old I was, I'm going to guess around 5 or 6? I opened the box secretly one day and scattered them all over the house. My mum was in tears sorting that lot out! Meany-pants me would have made my kid pick them all up herself!!

Cheap craft kits are my nemesis; I love a good craft but there’s a certain shop where they just never quite work or break easily and then I’ve got an upset child.

When we lived in a 2-bed flat with two young kids, ILs, who lived just the two of them in a large 4-bed house, were forever trying to palm off DHs/BILs old toys and other large objects we didn't have room for. On oldest's 3rd birthday MIL kept asking us if we wanted a sandpit - we did have a garden, but not much flat, hard surface in it to put a sandpit on. So I said 'Thanks, but I don't really think we have the space'. But she kept asking and eventually I said 'Thank you it is a lovely offer but we just don't have anywhere to put it'.

She bought the sandpit.

It turned out to be one of the wettest summers for years so it got used about twice and the sand never recovered from the sheer volume of water that got in it (it was a wooden one with a tarp cover, so not very secure).

Those “fossil” things where you chip a plastic dinosaur out of a block of plaster of Paris. Loads of mess and kid inevitably whacks their thumb with the hammer. Ditto those rock/ gem kits because the tools they give you don’t work so you have to go down the hardware shop. Also I’m too scared to let the kids do it as I went to school with a kid who hit a stone with a hammer and was blinded by a chip that flew off it so I end up smashing endless rocks with hammers. If I wanted to do that I’d just rob a bank in Alabama.

My parents gave us each a £50 note. Very generous but I feel like they are awkward to spend so had to put it in the bank which is only open on certain days/times

A learn to knit/crochet/sew/whatever kit for DC just on the cusp of the age range for the kit (which was optimistically labelled, I must say) and had no basic skills whatsoever. I had to learn to knit/crochet/whatever first so that I could then teach DC and I had no interest in doing so and no time and no skills myself.

Board games that require more players than there are in a household.

Crafts and "science"/perfume/bath bombs/jewelry making/crystal kits , they are really a one time use thing and makes a tremendous mess. Would much rather they get a fiver or a tenner to out towards an outing or ice cream.

Slime, I imagine

One relative has form for buying a £20 spa voucher for a place where treatments start at £50.... just no!

Another gives £10 to the kids and every time says "mummy will buy something nice for you". Really hard with a tenner.

Urghh slime, the worst gift ever.
My friend, who lives in a pristine house, gave one to DS, I could have throttled her.
I'm sure someone gave it to her and she hid it from her DS and gave it to mine. 😆

Thought of another one... memorabilia, especially themed versions of things you already own such as a specific monopoly set, that in theory holds some relevance, but in reality now just means you now have two sets of monopoly to store that don't get used.

That's absolutely a gift that would be put away to take with us next time we visited. "But grandma, you bought it so we could do it with you!"

Clothes for my children. Unless you know me extremely well, your taste is not mine and I hate the pressure to use the clothes which I would never choose to buy myself. It's so wasteful. Not all shops do exchanges without receipts, mostly they don't nowadays it seems. Just give me a voucher and let me choose them

Years ago my then boyfriend built a large wooden sandpit for a close friend's child's birthday without telling or asking the parents. I said several times he should ask if this was something they wanted, knowing they had a tiny garden too, but he was adamant that it had to be a surprise for the whole family. They said thank you through slightly gritted teeth! Child loved it though and it's still there now. I've always wondered whether it's one of these situations and they detest the sight of it but they're too polite to appear anything other than outwardly grateful.

Dh was once given vouchers for a gliding lesson.
As it happened he thoroughly enjoyed it, but before they started the instructor said, ‘Do you actually want to do this, or do you just feel you have to because it was a present?’

DC3 is autistic… cue every gift being some STEM ‘build-your-own-super-computer’ themed toy. Everyone seems to think I’ve birthed Alan Turing version 2.0.

I’ve been going through a divorce for two years… messy… ex is in prison for abuse… awful stuff. But dear God, it’s my third Christmas without him and I’m amassing the ultimate collection of self-help books on healing. Got a gift from a friend in the post yesterday: Another book on grieving and healing. I just want to throw them all in a fire and dance around it. I can’t do any more healing! I’m DONE with healing!