VeganKind Christmas Selection Box 2019
It seems that most the vloggers and bloggers that I follow on the internet are doing sustainable gift guides. Lovely to watch even if they are getting slightly repetitive with the same products being recommended here there and everywhere.
I was thinking about it the other day, and I thought I must be the hardest person in the world to buy a gift for … mainly because I don't want one ... but also because I only use the things I use.
I am allergic to perfume, so therefore allergic to most things with perfume in them. I have a couple of body creams that I'm fine with, but only one that I love so I tend to stock up on it when it's on offer three for the price of two at Boots. When I travel I have a couple of mini sized pots that came free with magazines that I fill up from the larger one.
I'm pretty safe with hand creams, and strangely I am okay with most bath foams, although anything lavender is a favourite, so that tends to be what people get me if they really want to buy me something … and I don't mind having a stock of those tucked away out of sight in the bathroom cupboard.
To go back to what the vloggers that I follow are suggesting as gifts ...
I don't need a thermos style travel mug or a bamboo travel cup as now own more bamboo cups than I will ever get through in my lifetime, thanks to that being a 'good present idea' in lots of peoples minds, it really was. But no more … please!
I have a brilliant set of metal drinking straws, not that I like them that much but they are better than plastic straws. Obviously these will last me a lifetime, unless I do a Uri Geller and bend them out of shape 😄
I have a bamboo toothbrush and absolutely love it, and I will be investing in more once I have used up all the new plastic ones I seem to have both here at the Van and back home in Wales. Why have we got so many .... I have no idea!! Once they have outlived being toothbrushes they go into the box under the kitchen sink to be used as little cleaning brushes for round taps etc ... really useful.
VeganKind Selection Box 2018
This year like last year I have treated myself to the VeganKind selection box. It's good to have a little assortment of goodies in the house that are suitable for me to eat when Alan tucks into his milk chocolate covered brazils and other assorted Christmas goodies while we watch a film.
So as well as being the awkward bugger who can't be bought perfume for, I also can't be bought a box of chocolates, a cheese board or even an off the shelf hamper. Which is drummed home to me every year when Alan's hamper arrives from the agency he works through, and out of the thirty or so items there are if I'm lucky one or two that I can eat.
This isn't a whingy, whiney post (or is it 🤣) it's just me talking to myself and wittering away. Trying to explain why I'm not the easiest person to buy presents for.
One thing that a lot of folk are coming around to realising this year though ... and about time too ... is that why buy for buying's sake. Why has Christmas got SO commercialised that we are swapping presents with people we hardly know, not knowing what they want or like or need. If we all just stopped, after sorting it out with the people we used to buy for, we could draw things back to how it used to be. Buying presents for our immediate family only, or if they are all on board pull back even further and give that most precious gift of all time.
A visit to an elderly relative or neighbour with a small bunch of flowers and time to sit and have a chat, a meet up for a coffee in the run up to Christmas with time to exchange hugs, a catch up on news and a flurry of good wishes are both surely more heart-warming than a gift set of talc and perfume arriving through the post to be put into the cupboard with last years, and the years before.
However you do Christmas is right, it's good if that is how you want to do it. I'm just whittering, stop me now, force feed me dairy free chocolate and tell me to shut up 🤣🤣
Sue xx
(not Scrooge honest ...)
