Clutter-free Gifts for Grandparents
- Tickets to a performance. Maybe not the new Green Day musical, but something current, ok?
- Donation to a favorite cause. Live Strong or Public Radio perhaps.
- Good eats. True locavore goodness: bring them a basket of the best stuff from your Farmer’s Market. Dark chocolate is a brain booster (see below!), check out the poco dolce tiles or Sucre candied violet bar to add a little extra flavor.
- Good drinks. Order a subscription to a monthly wine or coffee club.
- A class. Enliven an old passion like pottery or photography or encourage a new one with a foreign language or yoga class.
- Year-end video. Quit making them look at the mini display on your camera; we recommend a family yearbook-style DVD from onetruemedia so everyone can watch on the big screen.
- Restaurant discounts. If they eat out a lot and if there are some good choices in their city, restaurant.com certificates are a great deal. Otherwise, choose a straight-up gift certificate to a known favorite place.
- A Kindle. For the bookworm grandparents, the Kindle is a clutter-saver and a backache-saver. For non-reading, non-techy folks, it is clutter.
- Wireless digital frame. Like the kindle, in the right hands, these wireless frames can streamline a mantle and a refrigerator. We like this one by Kodak. (Routine tech support from you probably required.)
- Walking tours. If they live near a major city or have plans to visit one, arrange for an outing that’s educational and interesting. (My next door neighbor offers ethnic food tours of Berkeley)
- Family portrait session. A multi-generational picture by a professional will provide pictures that can be handed down forever. No matter your style, a pro is going to produce something better than those ones you keep emailing them from your iPhone.
- Birthday kit. Best for grandparents who are older, this is a DIY project. Create a binder with family birthdays listed and provide enough birthday cards (and stamps!) for your grandparents to stay on top of the important dates.
- Weekend alone with your kids. Oh wait, they should give that to you! See if you can pass this off as a gift rather than a favor. If not, you can however, purchase a museum membership for them to some place in their city. (And if it’s a children’s museum, they’ll enjoy it when they’re on duty.)
Don’t care about the clutter? Here is a wonderful gift guide for brain health. Find something at your price level.
Whitney’s Father In Law would also like to offer up what grandparents don’t want: things that make them do work like blank books to fill out together or family tree charts. {Uh oh, does that mean that my babysitting idea is out?!}
Share any other great grandparent gift ideas in the comments below!
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I love these ideas! Last year we bought the grandparents tickets to a children’s theater show for them to attend with our kiddos. With times being tighter this year, I think some of these (especially giving to favorite charities) can really make a difference. Or at least I feel better about giving them. Thanks for sharing your brilliant ideas!
I love the idea of activities as gifts. Most people have too much “stuff” anyway. Tickets to events are great!
thank you for this post. i loved it. you got some great ideas here. i think you’re on to something…
This year I made calendars with my son’s pictures on each month from Shutterfly.com. They turned out even better then I had hoped! Their site also allows you to input your own dates, so I added birthdays and anniversaries of all the immediate family.
oh crap. we totally got them a family tree album…. in my defense, they are constantly sending emails about family ancestry research, so I thought of it as a nice place to put it all?
oh well… next year, museum pass it is!
“Donation to a favorite cause”
This is a great idea, why didn’t I think of this before =)
Thanks for sharing such a unique list with all of us!