Finding the perfect gift?!
Why is finding the perfect gift sometimes so difficult?
Throughout the year we have plenty of occasions where we need to buy a gift. If someone we know gets married, we need to buy a wedding gift, if someone else we know has a birthday we have to buy them a birthday gift… the list goes on. I mean right now we are at the point where so many people will be about to graduate from university and even for them we need to give them a graduation gift to show them that all their hard work has been noted and we’re very proud of them.
The other day I thought I’d hit the shops and try and sort out a couple of outstanding presents that I needed to buy. Now I’ve been ordering online a lot, but I do love going out and just hitting the shops. There’s something about walking through the high street on a sunny afternoon browsing the shops to try and find something suitable to give. But you know what… I found it really tough to buy anything. I think I’ve been spoilt by working for a company who specialises in personalised gifts because I just felt like everything was so generic, there was no personality. Not like a set of engraved champagne flutes that look beautiful with carved butterflies and hand painted finish, a gift completed with engraved text on the glass – a special message wishing happiness and love. I was quite annoyed actually, I went into a few shops and there were so many “gift sets” made up of shampoos, perfumes and body lotion as well as little trinket gifts, but nothing that stood out to me as something that someone would appreciate, nor as something that would stand out and show that I had put a lot of time and effort into finding the gift – and you know what, I had spent a lot of time trying to find a gift.. I was just sadly very disappointed by the offering of gifts that were out there.
But why was I so disappointed? When I give a gift I want to give something first that is memorable, something that no one else would have thought of but something that is highly representative of the person to whom I am giving the gift as well as our relationship with one another. I also don’t want to give something generic, how many times have you been given a gift set filled with body lotion, body scrub and bath salts… how many times have you used them and how many times have they gone in the bin? I know that is bad, people have spent money on buying gifts like that… but at the end of the day the lotions and potions that people use are very personal and you can’t just chop and change the body lotion that you use because someone has given you a whole bunch of toiletries as a gift… it’s not good for your body’s routine. I also think that those gift sets are very impersonal… around Christmas time they come out in droves… every shop will have a “gift set” made up with a body lotion, bath salts and “something else” – like a scarf, mascara or whisky… you get my point. It’s all so samey… I don’t want to receive gifts like that so why then would I want to give gifts like that?
My fussiness therefore makes it hard for me to buy gifts, do you ever find that? That you write off a whole bunch of stuff because you wouldn’t like to receive it and that narrows your choices even further. I think that is why now I advocate personalisation so much. For Father’s Day for example rather than going out and buying my dad a gift, I made him a photo album of photos with pictures of me and him and things we’d done together throughout my life. There are a lot of memories and so I thought by framing them in one place we could look back on them together and remember things from yesteryear. It’s not only personal but also very sentimental.
So what I am trying to say is that buying a gift is so hard these days because of what we have on offer… but if you think outside the box a little and try and be as personal as possible, you could come up with something amazing, heartfelt and sentimental.
Related Posts:
