I can’t remember the last time my husband actually purchased a gift for someone. He is world’s best (or should I say worst?) re-gifter.
I used to get upset about it. Really upset. But then I realized it was actually sort of amusing and fascinating to watch him in action with his re-gifting. It goes beyond being a cheapskate and into territory that borders some sort of demented brilliance.
What enables him to do this is the fact that he is the type of person who believes he really does have everything he needs and he doesn’t need anything else in his life.
What he does is, when he receives a gift from someone, if it’s wrapped, he opens it just enough to reveal what is inside the wrapping. The wrapping paper is left intact, with no rips or other signs that it has been opened. He thanks the person who gave it to him, then the gift is labeled with a sticky note that indicates what the item is, who the giver was, when it was given to him and the approximate cost of the item. The sticky notes are color coded: different hues are used to indicate whether the present came from a family member, friend, co-worker or stranger. That way, he’s able to avoid re-gifting it back to the person who gave it to him in the first place. With few exceptions, he basically doesn’t even keep any presents given to him. All gifts immediately go into this re-gifting process.
They’re stored in large plastic containers with lids that are kept in our garage until a birthday, wedding or other gift-necessitating event comes along.
This system served him well until just recently, when my husband the expert re-gifter crossed paths with his new secretary, the expert re-packager. Her thing is to reuse the boxes from the gifts she receives by putting other items in them. Normally, at worst, this kind of thing would be annoying, because you’re not actually getting what the box makes you think you’re getting. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not.
This past Christmas, she gave my husband a special gift that she’d had embroidered, but she packed it in a box that originally had a chenille blanket in it.
We actually didn’t find out about his secretary’s nice gift until a few days later, when my mother opened her gift from my husband. Instead of getting the beautiful blanket that was featured in the photo on the box, she was perplexed to have received a golf shirt….. with HIS initials embroidered on it. – Mary, Nashville TN
