Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

This week, we consignment, resale, and thrift shopkeepers examine how the upcoming holidays can be special without doing harm to any family’s budget. Each day, we’ll look at how a not-extravagant celebration is not only POSSIBLE but PREFERABLE to those debt-ridden holidays of yore.

And our first installment, of course, concerns children. So many families feel they must dig into savings to make their children feel loved at this time of year. Okay, I’m not going to even TRY to talk a doting parent down from spending the college fund to buy a particular play thing. Instead, let’s save money elsewhere while making happy memories for the whole family, and letting the kids have a little say in the celebration:

Let the kids make their own wrapping paper to use for presents to the grandparents. Lay out white or brown butcher paper on the kitchen floor, then let the kids plant their hand prints in different colors of poster paint all over. Their grandparents might even treasure the paper more than the gift inside!

Make a craft together: Instead of spending an exhausting day at the mall spending money for easily-forgotten gifts, spend that time with your children, creating something for your home or as a gift to a classmate or relative. Not crafty yourself? There are kits galore, and you may discover you’ve given birth to the next Picasso…or Pollack!

Make writing thank-you notes easy on your children and a delight for the relatives: take a photo of the child with the gift, paste onto a blank card and let the child add a note.

Another thank-you card idea: let the kids create their own by making collages of holiday cards you’ve received, using blank cards or folded paper as the base. Who wouldn’t love a thank-you note from a child that’s decorated with a flock of reindeer, a snowman and a Virgin Mary?

Baby’s ornaments: He’s outgrown his crib mobile but you’re too sentimental to pass it on? Those darling figures are just the thing for memory-laden Christmas ornaments! (Even action figures that have fallen out of favor with your children will be nostalgic favorite “ornaments” in a decade or two!)

Kids love the unwrapping of presents more than expensive gifts. So wrap each dinosaur, doll dress, or other trinket separately.

Teach your children the true meaning of giving with a holiday tradition of a charitable act. Collecting food, baking home-made cookies for the family shelter or walking an elderly neighbor’s dog are some choices.

Read the whole series:

Holidays: Make them special for kids

Holidays: Make them special for your relatives

Holidays: Make them special for your town

Holidays: Make them special for your community culture