Do people really think their friends don’t notice re-gifted toiletries?

[MoustachaNatasha]

I know this will sound ungrateful, and I know the obvious answers are “just stop doing gifts,” “be glad you got anything at all,” or “maybe that’s all they can afford.” I get all of that, but that’s not really my question.
I always put thought into gifts I think my friends will genuinely like, but every year I seem to receive a random mix of toiletries or odds and ends that I can’t use, and feel too embarrassed to re-gift. Some of them are literally the free gifts you get when buying full sizes. They go straight into a cupboard and today I’m bagging them up to donate to my DD’s Christmas fair. It even crossed my mind that I’ll probably end up receiving something back from there in the next round of gifts.
So my actual question is: if you re-gift toiletries, do you honestly believe the recipient won’t notice, or do you just not care if they do?
Genuinely curious how others see this.

Every year one of my friends makes up a Christmas bag with very random regifted items. He or his partner obviously get gifted a hamper each year from a company and divide up the contents to pass on, and he gets free beauty samples from his suppliers. Last year I received a jar of lobster sauce, a jar of Christmas confit, and a jar of preserved lemons. Apparently because I love cooking. And a random bottle of conditioner. 🤣🤣🤣

Usually I shell out for a bottle of champagne and a box of Shortbread that they love but can't get as we don't live in the UK.

After the fifth year of random jars I don't use, I'm telling them let's just not bother with gifts this year. 😅

Send them to me! 😻

💯

I don’t have much but I do put thought into a what I know a friend will likely enjoy based on what I know about them. So the most recent example, a friend said she liked a Himalayan lamp so I got her one and she really loved it. Also bought her expensive stationery/journals in the past as she’d starting diarising.

But all I’ve ever got from her was a large box of malteresers (house warming gift 2 years after being here) and for Christmas a mini bottle of sparkly pink nail polish and little pointy ring holder. Both in faded/crumpled but unopened packaging. She’s never known me to wear any makeup let alone nail polish and it’s actually one of the things we joke about that o enjoy being bare faced and ‘plain’ and also I don’t own any jewellery at all.

Makes me sad becaus she has two teenage daughters and I think she just regifts any of their unwanted leftovers as opposed to putting any real thought into me like I do her. And she isn’t in debt or struggling. I drink chai tea, like biscuits, enjoy history - she knows these things but would rather just gift things her own teens reject 🤦🏻‍♀️.

I regift as raffle prizes. It’s the only way to get rid of it without insulting someone. I make sure the event is not being attended by the gifter or they don’t know who the donors are!

I received a couple of nice gifts of my DS and Dil for my 50th. I also got a bracelet with some charms on it (not Pandora). It was nice but not really my thing, some of the charms had a bottle of wine and a glass of wine, a 50 charm and a couple of others that were weird and had no connection to me. I dont drink wine and I just felt it was a weird gift.

A few weeks later i was looking at it again and got it out of the box and that when it dawned on me it was re gifted. It was DIL's mums 50th a couple of months before mine as in the box i found a lovely meaningful note addressed to Rachel (DILs mum) so it was obviously a re gift. I felt bad for the sender that Rachel obviously never read the note (it was very heartfelt about what a good friend she was) and casually discarded the gift.

Is it really such a bad things?

I’ve been gifted rituals and Elemis and even olaplex and have regifted with other gifts added. I didn’t think it was bad as otherwise gift sets that are £50+ sometimes would lay unused

Yeah I do this too- I just offer it out to people saying I got it as a gift but it doesnt suit my skin/hair etc and usually people are really chuffed to receive a random free gift on a usual monday morning.

I would never give it out as an actual gift because I think thats rude, dishonest and weird. Dishonest- because you are pretending you chose it especially for that person when you didnt make a jot of effort at all. Its lazy and thoughtless.

My mum last year gave my father in law a tin of biscuits which had some light up musical box thing in. I think someone had regifted it to her and she’d dine the same. She didn’t wrap it just gave him the tin, and when he couldn’t quite understand what it was (why an 88 year old man wants a light up biscuit tin who knows) it was patently obvious she’d no idea what it was.

she only stops at Tesco and it was from Ocado /marks (I checked) so I know she hadn’t bought it.

We did this with the ugliest glass vase you have ever seen.

But rather than regifting, when you were visiting a close family member, you would hide it somewhere in the house for them to find after you had left. As soon as they found it, they then had to do the same to the next relative they visited. It was like a game of tag, but with an ornament.

It became a bit of a huge family joke to both hide and find it.

That glass vase travelled all over the world for years and years, taken on family visits and left behind. It was always first on any suitcase packing list!

It was last seen in South Africa, where I think my brother hid it too well at an aunt's house, and it was not found before they moved. (or that's what they let everyone believe)

SIL gifted me some toiletries one year which still had the "To SIL from Bob and Jenny" Christmas gift label on it. (Bob and Jenny being friends of SIL). I'm pretty sure she didn't realise the label was still on it. But I was quite surprised, as the previous year, when other SIL had suggested that we no longer do presents at Christmas, regifting SIL had replied "but I just love choosing presents for everyone " - seemingly everyone didn't include me!
We thankfully no longer do Christmas gifts between the siblings, in-laws and adult siblings.

The only thing I regift is wine as we don't drink. People know this but it doesn't compute for some reason. I save it and give it to friends who do drink.

I've never regifted anything else or been given anything regifted, as far as I know!

This is hilarious because in my mind she knew exactly what she was doing and the re-regifting was passive aggressive. You should keep tradition going and continue the exchanging of the soap until you’re both very old and can laugh about it

This reminds me of my mum and my aunt who sent the same Christmas card back and forth to each other every year. They used paper inserts when their was no more room left to write on. They did it for about 40 years 😁

They don't care as much as you. It's not good enough for them but good enough for you.
I don't re-gift presents, I like most things, if I did not like a gift I'd pass it on as a freebie not a gift.

If people are at regifting stage I'd just agree with them not to bother any more.

My dad and his wife do this. Every year. They seem to think it's better to give loads of crap stuff than just 1 thing the person wants. Instead I got a milk jug in the shape of a milk carton (I don't even drink tea so that was useless) and 2 years running I got potato storage sacks 🫠

My sil does this. Gifts things that were obviously bought for her that she didnt want. Most obvious one she got me was a personalised monogram bag. So, my name begins with M, hers with P. She gifted me a primark canvas shopping bag with an obvious P on it 🤔 (I inwardly rolled my eyes but wasn't going to say anything) when my husband, totally cluelessly and innocently asked "nice bag, but what's the P for?" ....awkward silence.... Sil clears her throat and replied awkwardly "...primark?" and my husband frowned and said "hmm. Ok. Or Polly (her name)? You should've bought one for yourself really!"

Husband totally naive and not getting it. Sil looked like she wanted the ground to swallow her up.

The card thing is really nice though.

If someone gives me a present that they’ve clearly not thought about then all bets are off. I literally do not want a gift that isn’t considered. Give it to someone you give a shit about. Any gift I give a person, small or large, has thought behind it. If someone gives me a paperback from a charity shop for a quid that they thought I’d like, fantastic. An unwanted regifted toiletry set costing £30 quid. Bugger off.

I don’t buy gifts for many people.
We tend to give our DCs money or they tell me exactly what they would like including the website or shop I can buy it from.
I would not appreciate random regifts.
We tend to buy specific things or even buy events such as theatre tickets, meals etc.
I buy things people actually want not regifted B&H gifts sets.

Spot on

This is what my MIL does I always get some lovely candles after her birthday and Christmas she gets so much she just couldn’t use them all. SIL gets the alcohol that she doesn’t like. Works out good for us!

"Keeping for best" is very common in the older generation. My husband has just had the sad task of clearing his mother's house after she passed away, and found lots of unused items like cushions, scarves, gloves etc that she had received as gifts over the years and kept for best, only to never use them. In latter years we gave her plants (she loved gardening etc) as they can't be kept for best.

When my sister got married she received a set of silver-plated coasters from a neighbour. Inside was a gift tag reading "best wishes to Fred and Edna on your silver wedding." 😆 We certainly realised that was a regift.

I've regifted booze that's not to my taste - flavoured spirits, that kind of thing - to friends who buy those types of booze themselves. No point wasting a £35 bottle of unopened Mason gin, is there?

One year I gave my birthday present from MIL to my SIL because MIL mixed us up and bought me the perfume SIL likes.

But random regifting is a bit weird.

I don’t regift toiletries at all. If I receive any I don’t want (rare) I’ll donate them to the church fair. I always put a lot of thought into gifts.