I take so much pride in getting people awesome gifts. I know the best gifts don’t have to cost a ton of money, and this year that’s more important than ever. I don’t have much extra money to spend (I’m still spending more than I should, but I’m working on it). But I still wanted to get Hanukkah presents for my family like I do every year. And I really like to make sure that I find presents that they will really like and might be things they wouldn’t think of getting for themselves.
Because I find presents that they might not think of on their own, I do tend to get a lot of random things for people. But they are random things that I truly think that they will love. I don’t know how long I have felt this way about gifts, but I know it’s been a long time. I know it goes back at least until I was a teenager. Back then, I would start planning out gifts maybe a month or so in advance. I know that’s more in advance than some people do, but for me, it didn’t feel like enough time. So I started planning better.
I know what gifts I will have to buy every year. I know when birthdays are happening and I know I do Hanukkah presents with my family at Thanksgiving. So planning it out is a pretty set schedule. I do still occasionally have a time crunch with figuring out gifts, but more often I am considering a few options when it’s close to the time I will be shopping. I always am seeing things online in various lists or looking through catalogs that have different types of gifts. And no matter what time of year it is, whenever I see something that I think would be right for someone, I save it in a bookmark in my web browser. I actually need to be a bit more organized with that because it’s just a single bookmark folder called “Gift Ideas” and I should organize it by person. But I have a few dozen things I’ve seen over time that I like as possible gifts for the people in my life.
I don’t always shop from the list. Sometimes I like to do some extra shopping to see if there is something else that inspires me. For example, this year for Hanukkah I got one gift for my parents and one gift for my brother and sister-in-law (Rory already got his gift early). The gift for my parents was something I saw on a list online about a year ago and I knew it would be something they could use. It’s not a big gift and it feels a bit silly, but it’s something I know they will use a lot and they wouldn’t have thought of for themselves (sorry to be vague, but my parents sometimes read this blog and I’m not spoiling their gift). But for my brother and sister-in-law, I wasn’t feeling too enthusiastic about the things I had previously saved as bookmarks for them. So I did a bit of online shopping and had a discussion with my mom about some potential gifts. And I think I figured out the perfect thing for them!
I’ll be seeing my family soon and that’s when I’ll be bringing everyone’s gifts. We are doing Thanksgiving as a small family unit before Thanksgiving this year. So exchanging gifts will be earlier too. I’m not totally sure if everyone else is planning on doing gifts then, but they all know that I will be doing it. It saves me a bit of money to not have to ship gifts later, and if I can save money doing something easy then I’m going to do it. And fortunately, I already have everyone’s gifts at my house. I just need to wrap them (since I’m not flying anywhere I can use wrapping paper again) and then bring them with me in a little over a week when I see everyone.
It’s a bit crazy that I’m done with all my holiday shopping before Halloween happened, but it’s also nice. I don’t want to stress over presents and knowing that they are done is a little bit of calm in my life right now. And that also means I can start looking at potential gifts for next year now so I’ll be ready in a year when I’ll be doing my holiday shopping again.
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