by Texas Homesteader ~
With all the competition during the holidays to grab the attention of your Christmas gift recipients you’ve got to wonder, can you really give more environmentally-friendly gifts that they’ll actually love?
As it turns out, yes.
(Note: Some links in this post will take you to other related articles for further information. But links preceded with * are affiliate links. If you click and buy something I could receive a tiny commission.)
Environmentally-Friendly Gifts
I’m very environmentally aware in almost everything I do.
Now I don’t expect everyone to see things exactly the way I do. We’re all different & that’s a wonderful thing! But being very environmentally aware is just part of who I am.
For me though, if at all possible I’d love to give gifts with a lighter footprint. Gifts that hold true to my values. But gifts that they’ll love!
Here are my favorite eco-friendly gift suggestions:
Experience Gifts A Fun Eco-Friendly Gift Option
Giving “experience” gifts are my favorite eco-friendly gifts! RancherMan & I decided to give experience gifts to our grandkids each year instead of buying them toys.
There were lots of options and we had so much fun planning and we got to spend quality time together.
Of course there are many experience-gift options such as taking them to museums, exhibits or maybe lunch and a movie with an ice cream treat afterwards.
Our Experience Gifts to our grandchildren have included:
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Indoor Rock Climbing
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Ninja Warrior Obstacle Park
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Drive Though a Christmas light display
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Escape Room Mystery Fun
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Enjoying the Theater For Live Plays
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Ft. Worth Stock Show & Rodeo
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These memories will far outlast any toy we could have purchased for them. You can read more about our Experience Gifts here.
Homemade Craft Gifts
Sometimes RancherMan & I make something fun for our gift recipients. You can see a complete List Of Homemade Gifts Here. But a small sampling of homemade gifts:
Homemade Fire Starters
Solar Light Feature
Wooden Birdhouses
Homemade Edible Christmas Gifts To Please Anyone
We’ve given lots of homemade edible gifts over the years that our family loved:
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Homemade Venison Jerky
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Grape Jelly from grapes grown in my garden
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Pear Preserves from pears picked from a neighbor’s tree
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Homemade Apple Pie Filling using apples from my aunt’s tree.
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Jars of homemade Pumpkin Granola
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Triple Chocolate Truffles
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In my opinion homemade gifts of food are priceless because they’re presented with something that costs the gift-giver more than money: their precious time. They’re true gifts of love.
Those gifts have always been made with love and have been well received by our friends & family.
Low-Waste Hygiene Environmentally-Friendly Gifts
I’ve used a low-waste Gillette safety razor for years. So I was GIDDY when RancherMan asked for a real honest-to-goodness safety razor for Christmas!
No more plastic disposable razors in our household, can you hear the choirs singing?? This will be a favored of all environmentally-friendly gifts for him.
I got him a vintage nickel-plated Gillette SuperSpeed beauty from the 1960’s and it’s as clean as a whistle. (He asked for a vintage razor but you can buy new *safety razors very inexpensively too)
Low-Waste Razor Blade Option
As if that wasn’t enough to get excited about, he ALSO asked for this box of *double-edged blades to go with it.
Why buy this box of 100 razor blades when you can buy a little plastic box of five safety-razor blades at Dollar General for a buck??
Well these blades are paper wrapped and come in a cardboard box – no plastic at all!
They were inexpensive and 100 blades will last quite a long time for both of us. My little crunchy-green heart is just singing!!
Magazine Subscriptions – A Gift Throughout The Year!
But what if your loved one lives far away? Magazine subscriptions are a fun way to give a gift over & over throughout the year. And you can even receive them electronically now.
One of my favorite publications is Mother Earth Magazine. It’s chock full of hints & tips for DIY, MIY, self-sufficiency. And every now & then you might actually see an article published in this magazine from MOI. 🙂
There are endless options – children’s magazines, specific hobby themed magazines and more. Something for everyone!
So there is a quick list of fun yet environmentally-friendly gifts. Delightful to give OR receive!
What about you – what are your favorite gifts to give & get?
~TxH~
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Holiday Cooking Tips
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C’mon by & sit a spell! Come hang out at our Facebook Page. It’s like sitting in a front porch rocker with a glass of cold iced tea. Lots of good folks sharing! You can also follow along on Pinterest, on Twitter or on Instagram.
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I’d love experience gifts for my girls too. They’ve got enough stuff.
A couple of years ago we started doing something to help our daughter and son-in-law around their home and they did something with us. They helped us try to drill a well point for our own suburban water supply. We had loads of fun and multiple tries getting down about 16m but ended up this year paying for a professional borehole which is down to 42m and flows well. I helped with clearing rubble and other jobs while they were at work and having sewerage and foundation damp repairs to their home. My husband started making them a wooden cupboard…still to be finished. They also helped with the honey harvest. We live in suburbia in Cape Town, South Africa so it is Summertime now and there are water restrictions…my garden is thriving on the ground water. They however are living in California currently so till they get back we can’t do a similar thing but I’m sure we will go back to doing things to bless and help rather than giving bought ready made things for Christmas.
The gifts always cause so much of the pressure we seem to all experience at Christmas so we’ve tried to scale it back to make it much less the center of attention. Our children are now following our footsteps with their children, our grandbabies, and scaling way back and focusing on other instead of themselves. I think there are many people who are just becoming aware of how ridiculous the gift thing has gotten over the years and are wanting to step back and refocus. ~TxH~
I’m with you, I love food recipes but man it’s hard to have them around and not eat them all before they are given out! I love giving homemade spa products, way more eco-friendly (and chemical free) than store bought stuff, I put them in glass jars that are really pretty and then whenever they run out they can either return the jar (and I’ll usually refill it) or keep and use it for something else.
They’re so fun! And you get to test all the leftovers 😉
Want to give a great gift that is DIY, inexpensive, helps the environment, gets everyone outside, gives time with loved ones, and forges memories all rolled into one? Make seed bombs from vegan gel caps, a bit of organic potting soil and some seeds (about 2 seeds/cap). For added fun make some slingshots for firing those bombs into hard to reach places.
Merry Christmas!
I love this post! I am still giving some major gifts to my daughters and grandchildren but most of them are very useful – sewing machine etc. Hopefully some of these things will last a lifetime and not end up in a landfill in a few months. Of course many gifts will be food! My daughters say that I’m their CSA. We have just over a half acre but we’re putting it to good use.