Want, Need, Wear, Read

So I know Thanksgiving is still a week away, but we've been doing some Christmas planning around our house. This year, we're embracing a new gift giving agenda in our little family. This isn't an idea for emphasizing "the true meaning of Christmas," which is, of course, of significant importance. Rather, this is just a new way of selecting gifts for one another. Until now, Scott and I have always set a dollar limit and then each purchased for the other one within that limit. It works fine, but results in us focusing on "maximum bang for the buck" instead of thoughtfully selecting the gifts we truly want to give.

Here's the new plan. Each of us will receive four gifts. One under each of the following categories:
Want
Need
Wear
Read

Four categories. Four gifts. Each with a fancy tag stating the category. For example, Owen's "wear" this year will probably be snow pants and mittens and his "read" will be a book of trucks. His "need" could be new sippy cups or bath towels. Still fun gifts, but hopefully this will help us keep things reigned in both now and down the road. We still have to work out what this means for Santa. He'll probably fill the stockings and leave one significant "Santa Gift."

For now, I'm excited to shop with these ideas in mind. It changes your gift buying perspective to brainstorm, "What would Scott like to read?" Instead of "What would Scott like that costs $27 because that's how much money I have left in the pot."

We'll see how it goes.

P.S. This is one of those ideas that I pilfered from the blog of a friend of a friend of a friend. At this point, I have no idea where I found the idea, so how about a big shout out all those blogging mamas who are posting great ideas for the world to read. Here's one mom's blog that's doing this and even has gift tags you can purchase.