46 Minimalist Christmas Gift Ideas For Friends and Kids
If you’re looking to slow down Christmas and avoid the stress of shopping, here are ten minimalist gift ideas for the people you love. These are presents that bring happiness instead of clutter and are great for people who have everything! This is your guide to finding minimalist Christmas gift ideas for women, men, and kids that keep the holidays stress free.
The frenzy of Christmas shopping is something I’ve chosen to pass up this year.
As my kiddos turn 6 and (almost) 3, I’ve started to realize how quickly the time passes. My heart keeps tugging on me to slow time down, but as we enter into the holiday season, the opposite seems to occur.
Related post: How To Slow Down The Holidays
We fall into patterns of compulsive buying, excessive spending, and unnecessary stress.
This year, I am creating a slow and magical Christmas season. Part of this effort relies on simplifying the whole notion of gifts and coming up with some great minimalist Christmas gift ideas for the people in my life.
As someone who values minimalism, I find that Christmas can be a particularly challenging time of year to stick to my values while participating in annual traditions. However, curating a list of fantastic minimalist Christmas gift ideas has helped me approach gift giving authentically and without stress.
In this post, I want to share with you the magical ways in which you can show people you love them without panic-infused spending to check names off a list.
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Minimalist Christmas Gift Ideas for Friends
Create a personalized gift
One of the things I value most is time. It’s why time management, productivity, and motivation are so important to me – they help me make the most of my time and build a life I love.
When somebody makes me a gift that they took the time to think of and create, it means the world to me.
It’s easy to throw a wad of cash at the latest sale, but it also feels random and very impersonal. I don’t want to be just another box on someone’s list. I am perfectly okay with not getting a gift from you if we are not close enough for it to be a thoughtful gift.
I think one of the most amazing gifts you can give someone is a personalized gift that you took the time to create.
This year, I am choosing to create a watercolor painting for each member of my close family. Am I an artist? Far from it… But I think this would be a special gift that they would hold close to their hearts, rather than forgetting who it came from or when they received it.
I will be accompanying this painting with a personalized letter explaining how this person has positively impacted my life and how thankful I am for this relationship. Nothing would make me tear up more, and so I’ve decided it’s going to be a wonderful gift.
Here are some other ideas for gifts you can make for others
- Create a personal card
- Create a set of candles
- Create different soaps
- Create a hot cocoa kit
Minimalist Christmas Gift Ideas for Kids
Focus on experience gifts
The biggest value minimalists hold is that experiences bring more joy than things do.
We don’t need to acquire more STUFF, we need to feel more alive, experience more of our world, and connect more deeply with other people.
But it can be a challenge to come up with experience gifts…
I think the biggest thing holding people back from gifting more experience gifts is that it doesn’t light the person up right away. An experience gift usually brings delayed gratification. As the person giving, we want to be able to light the other person up and see their pure joy when they open our gift.
Also, experience gifts are generally pricier than your average ‘thing‘, but the memories they create are priceless and last for years to come, whereas the ‘thing’ breaks, gets lost, or ends up in the landfill.
Experience gifts we’ve given or considered giving our children include
- Lessons: snowboarding lessons, gymnastics lessons, art lessons, a pottery class, etc.
Lessons can be expensive and they require a serious time commitment, but they make a great gift and usually bring joy for many months. - Gift cards: the zoo, the trampoline park, the bowling alley, the arcade, the indoor playground, the ziplining park, etc.
A gift card to a location you don’t frequently visit makes a great gift. - Trips: a weekend getaway, a one night stay at a hotel, a special summer vacation, etc.
These definitely require money and planning, but they will be remembered for ages. They make some of the best memories of our lives.
Experience gifts you can give to the adults in your life, depending on their hobbies, include:
- A ski pass
- A hotel stay
- A dogsledding adventure
- A glamping adventure
- Tickets to a theatre production
- Movie theatre tickets
- Gift cards to your favorite restaurants
- Ziplining adventure
- Skydiving adventure
- Tickets to a concert
- A massage gift card or a spa package
- A life coaching package to help them achieve their dreams 😉
You can give the experience for the receiver to enjoy on their own, or you can gift it with the intention that it will be an opportunity for both of you to spend time together. Either way…
An experience gift is a magical way to make the most out of life without cluttering up anybody’s house.
Prioritize consumable gifts
Christmastime can bring a lot of clutter which leaves us more stressed out after the holiday season than we were trying to get ready for it. And I get it, in the hurried frenzy of shopping, planning, and cooking, coming up with good gift ideas can be overwhelming and stressful., so we end up with a house full of things we didn’t need because we were just trying to get through the list.
That’s why I think consumable gifts are a good way to go if you don’t feel entirely comfortable gifting an experience gift, and would like to present a THING, but don’t want it to create clutter.
Here are 10 great ideas for consumable gifts you can get the kiddos in your life
- Window art kit
- String art kit
- Rock painting kit
- Bracelet kit
- Soap making kit
- Craft making kit
- Origami kit
- Sewing kit
- Candle making kit
- Science experiment kit
- Robotic car building kit
You can also get amazing kits for the adults in your life too, depending on their hobbies, such as:
The great thing about gifting kits is that they usually bring people together in an activity, they teach you something new, and once you’re done with it, you’re done with it. It doesn’t stick around forever.
Other great gift ideas that don’t fall under the boxes above include
- A donation in their name
- A kindle or kobo to reduce book storage
- An Audible subscription
I know how hard it is to stay removed from the hurried frenzy of consumerism that Christmastime has turned into.
Even with the best of intentions and the highest of values, we can become so exhausted that just buying the random thing that’s on sale becomes the easiest option to get us through the holiday season.
But it doesn’t have to be that way! If you start your Christmas planning in November, or early December, you can come up with wonderful minimalist Christmas gift ideas that will bring true joy to the people in your life.
And remember, you can’t fix a lifetime of consumerism in one Christmas season. Try your best to give thoughtful, minimalist gifts, but know that you will probably buy things you regret and you won’t get it perfect in year one. However, year after year you will get better at gifting things that bring true joy. Give yourself some grace.
I hope you have a wonderful, merry, calm, Christmas season full of joy and laughter.
Merry Christmas!
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