Money Saving Mom®

Guest post from Charity of The Homeschool Experiment.

One of the most memorable Christmas gifts in our house has been huge appliance boxes. Best of all, they’re totally free!

Here’s how I’ve done this in the past.

Go to the loading dock of an appliance or furniture store. Usually if I show up back where the Dumpsters are, the workers are only too happy to get rid of whatever big boxes they have. Refrigerator, washer and dryer are all good. You could call first, but usually the person on the phone doesn’t know the box situation and it can be hard to talk to the people in the warehouse during the Christmas rush. I just show up.

“Break down” the box and put it in your van/SUV. You’ll have to flatten the box, so bring along a pair of scissors to cut any tape (and wear jeans). You might need to do this on the weekend or sometime when you don’t have the kids, since the boxes, even flattened, take up a lot of room in the car. You don’t want to lose a child’s head or anything.

Store it in a secret location. If you’ve broken the box down, it’s pretty thin so you can slip it behind something in the garage or attic.

Bring it out and set it up on Christmas Eve. Make it a box again(you might have to use some heavy-duty tape), and wrap it if you want. This is easier than it sounds. I just wrap the big rolls of wrapping paper around and tape it. Sometimes I’ve hidden a smaller gift inside the big box because I was worried the kids would be disappointed that it was empty!

After all the Christmas festivities, give the kids creative supplies (shreds of wrapping paper, markers or crayons, foil, safety scissors, tape), then ignore them and go read a book. They’ll turn the box into a spaceship, secret cave, or castle. My kids have spent days in their boxes.

Give a time limit for the box. If you’re like me, having an enormous box in the middle of your living room tends to make you a little crazy — so give clear time limits for how long the box can stay! I think last year, I said the box had to live in the backyard after Christmas Day (you could use the garage or basement if you have snow). Then, after one week, the box goes away completely.

You can either flatten it down and store it for summer or throw it away (if your kids haven’t grown emotionally attached to it like mine tend to do).

Have a blessed, creative, and very economical Christmas! (As I was working on this my kids saw the picture of “The Rocket” (their box) and they’ve requested yet another box for this year. Sigh.)

Charity Hawkins is the author of The Homeschool Experiment: a novel. She lives, writes, and wrestles boxes in Oklahoma.

Testimonial from Chelsea from Stay At Home{Made} Mom (inspired by the 31 Days of Giving on a Budget series):

Growing up, my husband’s immediate family always gave very small Christmas gifts. Some years, it was all they could afford. Other years, it’s all they felt was necessary — they didn’t see gift-giving at Christmas as essential as recognizing the meaning behind it

While my husband did (and still does) respect his parent’s perspective, he secretly struggled with why others families could afford to give more. Because of this, my husband decided at a young age that it was important to him to find a way to generously gift at Christmas.

The only problem was, he failed to share that perspective with me! So, throughout the first year of our marriage  I bought small gifts I found marked down and tucked them away. When it came time to wrap everybody’s presents, my husband was appalled at the items he saw.

I reasoned with him by saying something like:

“We don’t make a lot of money. Nobody is going to care if we give small gifts. We might have a nice cushion of money, but that’s only because we’ve worked so hard to save. We need that money in case something unexpected comes up. They’ll understand. They’ll probably give small gifts themselves and it will even out. You’re being prideful by wanting people to think more of us because of what we buy.”

His response was:

“We may not make a lot of money, but we have been truly blessed with the income we have. We have no debt to worry about, we keep our monthly bills low. We do a good job saving our money, and because of that, we can afford to give in return. It doesn’t matter if others give us small gifts, I want to be able to bless them in a big way. We will still have plenty of cushion leftover, we’re not spending unwisely, and God will always provide. You’re being prideful because you want to spend as little as possible so we can have more money for ourselves.”

As much as his words stung, I knew he was right. I wanted to spend $5 or less on each person because nobody would think anything of it. Even though we both understand that the true gift behind Christmas is Jesus, my husband still wanted to use this time of year to greatly bless others. Not to impress them. But because it brings so much joy to his heart to do so.

This year, I asked my husband if we could go gift shopping together. We had a great time: we laughed, smiled, and enjoyed each others’ company as we shopped.

As we wrapped the gifts, I couldn’t help but notice something felt different. I noticed a joy inside of me that I had never really felt while wrapping gifts the previous years. Something truly was different about wrapping the gifts we specially picked and stretched our budget to buy.

Finally, I was very excited to bless others, and I understood my husband’s heart.

There aren’t many secrets as to how we were able to afford the gifts we did. We set reasonable limits as to not deplete our account, we used Amazon gift cards earned from Swagbucks, we made homemade items like granola and chex mix to supplement our store-bought gifts, and we shopped around using deal blogs for the best prices. Admittedly, we also ate out less and made fewer Starbucks runs in order to accommodate our new gift budget.

The point of this post is not to discourage you, or to say there is something wrong with giving small and/or handmade gifts — as long as you’re giving these gifts with joy. When I was giving less, it was because my heart was in a selfish place – not because it was outside of our means.

What I’ve learned, more than anything, is how essential my giving attitude and heart are to giving the perfect gift.

Chelsea is mommy to Lainey, wife of Joe, child of God, compulsive list-maker, and dreamer of huge goals. She shares her own budget-friendly recipes and creations with you on her blog, Stay at Home{made} Mom.

photo credit