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5 Ways to Spend Less Time Christmas Shopping

Five ways to spend less time Christmas shopping

I’ve talked quite a bit in this series about having less of a focus on stuff and spending less time shopping. But you might be wondering, “How exactly do I go about that??”

Here are four ways you can move your Christmas celebration away from the shopping end of the continuum.

1. Draw names/organize a limited gift exchange.

This is the route my adult siblings and I have chosen, and I highly recommend it. Each of us is assigned one person (so each couple shops for another couple), which means that we have the fun of exchanging gifts without a crazy amount of stress. Because we only need to give gifts to one couple, I can pour a lot more thought and energy into picking out/making a gift than I would otherwise be able to.

I feel like this arrangement has all of the fun and none of the stress that normally can accompany family-wide gift giving.

2. Don’t give gifts to everyone.

I’m not exactly sure when in history this came about, but our current culture seems to expect us to give gifts to a ridiculously large number of people. I read a Real Simple magazine a few years back that talked about all the tipping/giving that we should be doing at Christmastime, and it was a little overwhelming (which is kind of funny, given that the magazine has the word simple in the title.)

Giving gifts is lovely and all, but when our gift-giving begins to cost us sanity and financial peace, something has gone wrong.

For instance, giving gifts to all of our nieces and nephews would start to be ridiculous. On my side alone, there will soon be 11 nieces and nephews (that’s not counting our kids!). So, my siblings and I have agreed that this is not something we want to do. Not only do we want to avoid the stress, we all feel like our kids get plenty of presents anyway.

I’m not suggesting that you cut out all gifts to your children or anything like that, but maybe you don’t need to give something to your mailman, hairdresser, dog groomer, and all of your children’s teachers.

3. Give fewer gifts.

In the past, Christmases haven’t always been as present-heavy as they are now, and somehow, people still managed to have happy Christmases. So, I think it’s pretty likely we can too.

An earlier post has a lot of my thoughts about giving children fewer presents, but I also think the adults could stand to have fewer gifts, especially if those gifts are putting a strain on people’s finances.

Paring back on the adult gift-giving should be easier because adults should be able to be a bit more reasonable about it than kids (theoretically speaking).

If you’re going to make a big change in this arena, though, I do think talking to the people you exchange gifts with is a good idea. Who knows? Maybe they would be relieved to have the freedom to spend less as well. And maybe they’d even agree to a price cap.

4. Give experiential/service gifts.

These kinds of gifts obviously help to reduce the focus on stuff, since they’re not tangible. And they don’t require a whole bunch of shopping, either.

Gifts of this sort could be a park or zoo pass, a membership to a club/museum/etc, tickets to a concert or play, or a gift certificate to a restaurant.

Or if someone on your gift list has children, giving the gift of babysitting (with maybe a restaurant gift card attached!) is an awesome idea. I haven’t ever really met a set of parents who wouldn’t welcome that gift (as long as the giver was someone they trusted with their children).

5. Start ahead of time.

Saving your shopping for the last-minute is an almost sure-fire way to increase your shopping hours. Crowds and traffic get pretty awful in the stores when we get deep into December, so you can spend a whole lot less time shopping if you do it early.

You can also choose to do a lot of your shopping online, but again, that’s only going to be practical if you start ahead of time (shopping online at the last minute is going to cost you a pretty penny in shipping charges!)

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I’m sure there are more than five ways to cut back on shopping time, so add your ideas to mine!

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Previous posts in this series:

Introduction

Think more about serving and less about impressing.

Make a priority list.

It’s ok to have an imperfect Christmas. And it’s ok to say no.

3 ways to lower children’s Christmas present expectations

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Joshua’s 365 post: Cricetinae

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David

Wednesday 24th of October 2012

Shopping ahead of time is our way of reducing Christmas shopping time. And I mean WAY ahead. We basically shop all the way through the year. If we are in Costco and see something that would be perfect for Penny for Christmas we say "That would be perfect for Penny for Christmas." and we buy it! It goes up into the attic with all the other Chrismas gifts that we started buying maybe as early as Feb! Perhaps when we were visiting family in England, or on vacation somewhere or just shopping in Home Depot or Lowes or Giant or wherever, as long as it is not perishable of course. Uncle Fred's Southern Comfort is not perishable! Nor is Aunt Mauds wine. Another advantage of shopping like this, apart from saving time is that you can often save MONEY too!!! Wow, how great is that? And when Christmas does roll around, not only have you saved money, found the perfect thing for most everyone but you now don't have to lay out thousands of dollars and hours pushing and shoving trying to find that perfect something - 'cause you already got it! Aren't you smart?

Melissa

Thursday 18th of October 2012

Have you heard of free shipping day? There are a bunch of retailers out there that offer free shipping on December 17 - and guarantee delivery by Christmas. It's a great way to do online shopping without having to break the bank for shipping costs! The website that shows you participating companies is www.freeshippingday.com.

Melissa

Thursday 18th of October 2012

Have you heard of free shipping day? There are a bunch of retailers out there that offer free shipping on a day on December 17 - and guarantee delivery by Christmas. It's a great way to do online shopping without having to break the bank for shipping costs! The website that shows you participating companies is www.freeshippingday.com.

Jen @ Dear Mommy Brain

Thursday 18th of October 2012

I like your caveat on point #4 because for my daughter's 3rd birthday, my husband's younger brother (who has never babysat a kid in his life) gave her an experience gift. He wanted to take her to the zoo by himself and I had to put the kabash on it because I just didn't feel comfortable with it.

So another point I would add would be if you want to do something like that as a gift, ask the parents FIRST. I was quite blind sided by the intention and felt bad saying no so now it's kinda awkward.

Megg

Thursday 18th of October 2012

I'm embarrassed to admit that I used to think I was doing something wrong because I only buy presents for my family and my (2) best friends. And I love experiential gifts! That's my new suggestion to my husband for gifts. This year for my birthday he got me tickets to Wicked and I'm so excited! I'm sure I'll remember seeing the show with him a lot longer than I'd be attached to a thing he gave me.

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