This Mom Has The Perfect Christmas Hack For Sibling Gift Exchanges
Avoid extra crap at Christmas and do this instead.
Organizing and mitigating sibling Christmas gift swaps can be daunting for a parent of multiples. Kids have no money, right? Or maybe a couple bucks in their piggy bank. So, you take them to the local dollar store and have them pick our three or four pieces of junk to give to their sibling. The act is sweet, of course, but then you’re just left with a bunch of plastic pieces of crap that end up in the trash sooner than later.
One mom has an easy fix to this Christmas gift problem, sharing a practical and easy way for kids to exchange gifts that will actually be used (or eaten!).
“Okay, how many moms out there? Moms with multiples, the minimalistic parents, the parents that are just done buying crap for their kids. Show your hands, okay? At Christmas, I have the best hack,” Alysa Barfell begins her viral video.
“Instead of doing the Dollar Tree where the little kids go to the Dollar Tree, they pick out really cute gifts, they like $5 to spend. Stop, I don't want the junk in my house. Give each kid a basket.”
She goes on to explain that each sibling is in charge of selecting one or two snacks to put in their other sibling’s snack baskets, calling the idea the “sibling snack swap.”
“So for example, I don't buy the animal fruit snacks, okay? I buy the mega box from Costco, okay? But the one with animals on it is my son's favorite, and my daughter knows that. So, my daughter was like, ‘Hey, I want to put fruit snacks in there.’ Great, awesome,” she explained.
“At Christmas, we can go a little bit overboard. Because guess what? At the end of the day, they get a snack. They get snacks for the house, and they're gone. They eat them, they're gone. There's no little toys, okay?”
Another perk to this gift hack is how a sibling snack basket eases the work of mom on Christmas morning and the exhaustive days after creating all that holiday magic.
“If you do this, there's no asking for snacks the day after Christmas,” Barfell remarked.
“So, when they're bothering you the day after Christmas, when you spend way too much time and you're overstimulated and you don't want to do anything, you just want to lay in bed, ‘Go get your snack basket,’” she says, imitating herself interacting with her kids.
She emphasizes the idea of making sure the kids are the ones in charge of what goes inside the basket.
She concluded, “They're in charge of picking it out, wrapping each box, whatever package, and putting it into the basket. Merry Christmas!”
One user wrote in Barfell’s comment section, “After my mom switched us to wheat bread, I was gifted a loaf of white bread for my bday. Best day of my life.”
“Get your kids consumables not more stuff 👏,” another user applauded.
One user wrote, “I now have something to tell my MIL to get my kids when she inevitably complains that I have not provided enough suggestions. Thank you!”
Another wrote, “Yes! We get snacks for our nephews too. We get them each a toy or something they asked for and then a big box/case/package of their favorite snack!”
In the age of so much consumerism and “stuff,” this basket hack is a perfect way to still make a gift exchange special without bombarding your home with more items that will be just thrown away in a month or stuffed in a closet to collect dust.
