One of the most frugal and heartfelt gifts for the season is the gift of time. Giving of your time and talents is a sure way to make someone’s Christmas merry, even if you are cash poor this year.
Gifts of time are appropriate not only for family, but for friends, co-workers and associates as well. The secret is to come up with the right gift for the right person. Just as you would pick out the perfect gift from the store, picking out the perfect gift of time takes some thought. For example, let us say you have two gifts to give: a cooking lesson and shoveling snow. You have a younger brother in college and an elderly neighbor to gift. Who would get what? The elderly neighbor would probably appreciate the shoveling, and the brother could use the cooking lesson.
Here are some more ideas for gifts of time that you may want to adapt for all of the people on your list.
Cleaning
You can clean just a room, a whole house, just the kitchen, just the bathrooms, de-clutter, just the windows, a basement, a garage, the good china, etc.
Baby sitting
Become a mother’s helper, carpool, baby sit for a date night, be an emergency on call baby sitter, take the kids to the park or zoo, etc.
Cooking
As mentioned above, you can give a lesson (and see below), prepare meals, organize the kitchen and more.
Outdoors and garden
Plant a garden, do some landscaping, mow the lawn, trim trees and bushes, weed, shovel snow, sweep sidewalks, rake leaves, pave a walk with flagstones, etc.
Crafts
Do you have a creative craft talent you can share such as knitting, creating a scrapbook, making soap, painting a mural, etc.?
Lessons
What are you good at that someone would like to learn? Can you change the oil in the car, create a resume, sew, do calligraphy, save money with coupons, or use a computer?
I hope this list will get you started!
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
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