Family Gift Ideas: the Ultimate Guide
Read this EarlyBird guide for help coming up with family gift ideas for any occasion.
We all enjoy treating the ones we love, and that’s why big holidays often revolve around shopping. Many families have developed huge expectations about who’s going to buy them what — but to be honest, sometimes all that buying seems a bit pointless.
After all, what family doesn’t already have too much “stuff”?
Over the past couple of years, there have been a couple of new up-and-coming trends designed to get rid of all of those meaningless presents and teach us to start gifting with purpose again.
There are loads of sustainable and meaningful gift ideas out there — the trick is honing in on which one of those gifts will be perfect for the people you love.
This guide explains how you can come up with family gift ideas and why you should consider giving a financial gift to your loved ones. It also gives you sustainable and useful family gift ideas you may want to consider.
How Do You Come Up With Family Gift Ideas?
When the holidays roll around, a lot of us rush out to get gifts for close friends and members of our families. But sometimes, it can be incredibly tricky to come up with gift ideas and shop for people.
Fortunately, there are a couple of really dynamic gifting systems families have started using over the past couple of years to help minimize pointless clutter around the house — but also maximize meaning and usefulness.
The two most common gifting trends families have started using are the “four-gift rule” and the “five-gift rule.”
What is the four-gift rule?
If you’re struggling with family gift ideas, a great place to start brainstorming is by deploying the four-gift rule.
The four-gift rule is a fairly recent trend that’s gained a lot of traction over the past few years on social media — and parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles swear by this rule when gifting to children and other loved ones around the holidays.
How does the four-gift rule work? It’s pretty simple.
Instead of just going out to buy a dozen expensive toys you see at the store, the four-gift rule forces you to limit your gifting per person to just four. More important still, those gifts must be: one thing they want, one thing they need, one thing to wear, and one thing to read.
In this context, the “want” is going to be your big-ticket item. It’s often going to include toys, electronics — that sort of thing.
The “need” is pretty self-explanatory: it’s something that a person might not be super excited about, but it’s an item they’ll get a lot of use out of.
For example, you could set up a custodial account for a child or get them a piggy bank, backpack, glasses, desk lamp, or lunchbox.
This is a great opportunity to provide a child with a financial gift that will keep on giving long after the holidays have ended — but we’ll cover that some more in just a minute.
The “wear” gift is also straightforward. Take a look at your loved one’s individual style, and gift them a quality and sustainable garment that they’re going to get a lot of mileage out of.
Finally, there’s the “read” gift. This part of the rule enables you to gift a book that speaks to a person’s interest and reading level. There’s a book out there for everyone — and even if the person you’re gifting to isn’t super into reading, you might be able to help them tap into a new passion with the right book.
The idea behind the rule is simple: most of us have too much stuff, and an increasing number of parents don’t want to teach their kids to be materialistic and buy stuff just for the sake of buying stuff.
That’s why so many families are hopping on the bandwagon and embracing the four-gift rule.
What is the five-gift rule?
The five-gift rule is a more recent version of the four-gift rule. With this rule, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, godparents, and others commit to gifting an individual five gifts instead of four.
The first part of the five-gift rule works the same as the four-gift rule. That means you should be aiming for the four personalized gifts we’ve already covered in the four-gift rule: something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read.
The fifth gift gives this rule a bit of extra pizzazz: something the child or family member can do.
According to a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, people get more joy out of being given experiences than they receive when you gift them random stuff. (Translation: instead of tossing a bunch of cheap toys at the kids you love on Christmas morning, aim to give them at least one experience that they’re going to remember for the rest of their lives.)