Stocking Your Gift Cupboard for Next to Nothing

© Michelle Vandepol

One of the best time and money saving moves you can make is starting a gift cupboard. You can house it in whatever spare space you have. The small cupboard above your fridge and the shelf in the top of your closet would both work well. If you want to take it an optimistic step further (if you make room the gifts will appear), you could clear out an old armoire and house it there. The idea may make you roll your eyes. If you’re trying to get money together to pay the bills and buy the groceries, how on earth are you supposed to get extra together for something like gifts?

I know it’s hard to spare even a few dollars some times, but in the long run gift cupboards save you time and shopping aggravation. How many times a gift-worthy occasion comes along when you can’t leave the house to shop and have no spare money to anyways! The gift cupboard solves both problems. You will likely get practiced at looking for deals to fill it. My personal standard is 1.99 or less for clearance bin items in mint condition. I also find items still in their wrappers at thrift stores. It sounds like a tall order, but if you have a quick peek in every bin you come across and don’t buy just for the sake of buying, you will strike gold. If you are a recreational shopper, you might look for a few items for your closet instead of yet another knickknack for your house. You could earn a few dollars at the bottle depot or the consignment shop and earmark a bit of it for replenishing gift stocks as well.

The golden rule of gift closeting is to never give something you are unsure will please the recipient just because it’s what you have in your closet. In the first while, you may not have all your gifts ahead of time. That’s okay. You are still ahead of where you were when you bought none ahead of time. If you want to get organized about it, write up a list of all the occasions and people you regularly buy gifts for. In doing so, you may realize you spend more money than you first thought you did on gifts. Fortunately, there are ways you can stock your gift cupboard with very little money.

Keep your eyes open at garage sales and thrift shops for like-new plant pots and vases. Make sure they are either classic or in tune with current styles. If you cannot clean them to a spotless finish, look for something else. The point of pre-buying gifts is to put more thought into them, not less. If you yourself receive a floral arrangement in a nice container, you can clean it after the arrangement is finished and put it together with the others you have collected to make a shelf for assembling floral arrangements in minutes. You can also start small plants from cuttings of yours to give as gifts. When assembling a flower arrangement, use the flowers and foliage, even bare twigs and berries, that you have in your yard first. Match the colors to the occasion, recipient, and container. For example, if your friend has a new baby boy, the blue hydrangas in your yard would be a perfect fit. If you have a florist nearby, you might pick up a stem of accent flowers for a dollar or two. If you decide to have them wrapped when they offer, you can carefully unwrap the cellophane at home and put it in the corner of the closet by the baskets you’ve picked up for pennies at yard sales. That then becomes your gift basket corner. If the florist has complimentary (with purchase, of course) gift tags and plastic stems for putting them into the arrangement, help yourself to the one that suits the occasion. If you already have a card at home, pick up one for another general occasion like a birthday and put that on your floral arrangement shelf at home.

You can use your reward points to get gifts too. Even at gas stations and grocery stores you can find little things to fill gift baskets. Specialty coffee, notebooks, key-chains, and seed packets are all nice to include. If you have a sewing scrap bag, spend an afternoon or two and sew them up into little drawstring or bow tied gift bags. Do the same thing with your paper scraps and old cards. Assemble a stack of handmade cards sized to fit small envelopes (found for a dollar a box at most dollar stores). When you receive a gift set or buy yourself a box of something assorted (teas, socks, nailpolish) take one small item out and put it on your gift basket shelf. Collect online and in the mail samples for gift baskets too. If you receive a gift with a cloth ribbon bow, put it aside for jazzing up a basket. Look on specialty websites and in catalogues for gift basket ideas. This will also give you an idea of what size they should be and how they are best presented. We all know it is the thought that counts. When gifting, make sure that is evident with something specially chosen from your storehouse of gifts.