Gift Ideas When You Have Little/No Money
-Babysitting: if you know any parents (especially newer parents) offer to watch their children for them to give them a break, for many parents getting the gift of free personal time is wonderful
-Petsitting: It’s the same idea with babysitting, and if you know someone will be traveling for Christmas, offering to watch their pets while they are gone can be a great stress reliever!
-Cleaning: Offering to come over and clean someone room/house for them can also be a great stress reliever, especially for those who you know struggle mentally (many with seasonal depression related to the holidays will as well) and this can often lead to their living space becoming cluttered and messy and having someone else clean can be a big help (please also consider that cleaning someone else’s living space can be a very intimate thing and/or a hard thing to bring up for some, so I would advise to only offer this if you know the person well and know it would help them)
-Cooking: You could offer to cook a meal for someone, bake holiday treats with someone, or surprise someone with an at-home dinner date!
-Bring Someone a batch of homemade cookies
-Create your own spice mixes/ rubs for someone else to use while cooking
-Make your own recipe book for someone
-Make homemade chocolate truffles
-Write them a heartfelt letter
-Make your own sugar scrub for someone
-Create a playlist for them
-Make ornaments for them (you can find many ideas online)
-Make play-doh, you can find recipes for homemade salt dough online that are easy to make a fun to play with
-Make slime! The ingredients are really simple and you can make all different kinds for them!
-Make a heat pad, if you stitch a simple shape you can fill it with rice and it makes a microwaveable heat pack! You can make a big one for someone to put on their stomach or back, or a small pocket sized one for a hand warmer
-Shaped crayons: if you buy silicone molds and crayons you can meltdown the crayons, pour them into the molds and then when they cool it makes shaped crayons!
-A tie blanket, tie blankets are no-sew blankets made out of 2 pieces of fleece which is typically a very cheap fabric, if you’ve never made one you can find tutorials online
(These are primarily for people who would already have this specific supplies on hand, but if you are able to acquire the supplies, trying to do one of these for the first time is a great idea to make/give a gift and learn a new a new skill at the same time!)
-Make them a candle: you could make them a personalized scent, you could also use recycled jars and/or wax to make them!
-Knit something: scarves, hats, plushies are some things you could do, you can find many patterns and ideas online as well
-Make soap: you could personalize it by making it a fun shape, a specific smell, their favorite color, or by decorating the jar
-Sewing: similar with knitting, there is many options for things you can sew, some ideas are, clothes for dolls or plushies, winter pajamas, plushies, you could even make fake food out of felt!
Places to look for cheap gifts:
-Dollar tree (This is also a good place to get craft supplies to make some of the gifts listed above)
-Etsy (while online shopping can get pricy especially with shipping costs, Etsy is a great place to find $5-10 gifts that are also from small businesses and/or artists)
